Columbia  ^niber^itp 

mtI)fCttpcfHrttigark 


LIBRARY 


PURCHASED  FROM 
THE 

WILLIAM  C.   SCHERMERHORN 
MEMORIAL  FUND 


UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    -    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN   &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 


BY 
EPHRAIM    EMERTON 

PROFESSOR   OF   CHURCH   HISTORY   IN   HARVARD   UNIVERSITY 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1916 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  191  i, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  January,  1911. 
Reprinted  November,  1916. 


NortoooU  ^reas 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 

Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


TO 

FOUR    UNITARIAN    WOMEN 

OF    FOUR    GENERATIONS 

MY    GRANDMOTHER,    MY    MOTHER,    MY   WIFE 

AND    MY    DAUGHTER 

I   DEDICATE   THIS    BOOK 


PREFACE 

This  little  book  is  intended  for  three  classes  of  readers : 
first,  for  those  to  whom  Unitarianism  is  only  a  name 
belonging  to  a  body  of  Christians  insignificantly  small, 
but,  rather  curiously,  including  a  remarkable  propor- 
tion of  men  who  have  been  distinguished  in  English  and 
American  life  and  letters ;  second,  for  those  who  have 
distinct,  but  unfavorable  impressions  of  Unitarians  as 
hostile  to  most  of  the  cherished  beliefs  of  Christians, 
perhaps  even  as  wicked  and  dangerous  persons  not 
safely  to  be  intrusted  with  important  private  or  public 
duties;  third,  for  Unitarians  themselves,  to  remind 
them  once  again  of  the  treasure  they  have  received 
from  their  fathers  and  their  obligation  to  see  that  it 
be  not  diminished.  Its  purpose  is  neither  to  excite 
controversy  nor  to  settle  it,  but  only  to  state  fairly  its 
own  constructive  propositions.  If  in  so  doing  it  suggests 
antagonisms,  it  does  so  only  to  make  its  own  positions 
clear.  The  right  to  differ,  the  most  precious  right  of 
the  thinking  man,  which  it  claims  for  Unitarians,  it 
recognizes  in  fullest  measure  for  all  honest  minds. 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

Three  friends,  one  a  Unitarian  theologian,  one  a 
Trinitarian  theologian,  and  one  a  man  of  pure  science 
without  formulated  religious  opinions,  have  had  the 
great  kindness  to  read  the  manuscript  of  these  pages 
and  have  approved  their  publication.  To  these  and  to 
one  or  two  others  who  have  shown  an  interest  in  the 
progress  of  the  work,  especially  to  my  colleague,  Profes- 
sor William  Wallace  Fenn,  Dean  of  the  Harvard  Di- 
vinity School,  I  beg  to  express  my  deepest  obligations. 

E.E. 

CAMBRrocE,  October,  1910. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface vii 

Introduction i 

CHAPTER 

I.    The  Nature  of  Belief ii 

II.    Miracle 29 

III.  The  Nature  of  Man 59 

IV.  The  Bible no 

V.    Jesus 148 

VI.     Redemption 176 

VII.     The  Church 203 

VIII.    Worship 229 

IX.    The  Future  Life 259 

X.    The  Thought  of  God 279 


IX 


UNITARIAN    THOUGHT 

INTRODUCTION 

In  these  days  of  religious  ferment,  when  the  per- 
petual conflicts  of  faith  and  knowledge,  of  tradition  and 
experience,  of  authority  and  independence,  of  unity  and 
diversity,  are  being  revived  and  re-fought  with  increas- 
ing energy,  it  is  the  part  of  every  community  of  religious 
men  to  give  account  to  themselves  anew  of  the  faith  that 
is  in  them.  Only  as  they  can  do  this  can  they  properly 
claim  the  allegiance  of  their  followers  or  attract  inquir- 
ing minds  from  other  sources.  There  is  indeed  abroad 
in  the  religious  world  as  elsewhere  a  spirit  of  charity 
and  toleration  which  we  must  heartily  welcome.  No 
one  would  openly  and  consciously  invite  the  early  zeal 
of  persecution  to  work  its  holy  mission  again  in  our 
modern  society.  However  much  the  persecuting  spirit 
may  still  be  lying  latent  in  the  hearts  of  men,  their 
tongues  are  quick  to  repudiate  any  such  charge.  Every- 
where we  hear  the  persuasive  cry  of  indifference  to  de- 
tails, of  surrender  of  non-esssentials,  of  modifying  the 
creeds,  even  of  reforming  the  ancient  mechanisms  of 
authority. 


2  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

All  this  is  well.  We  are  united  in  a  conviction  that 
former  times  erred  in  too  greatly  emphasizing  slight 
and  temporary  differences  in  men's  thought.  We  are 
all  glad  to-day  to  believe  that  such  unimportant  dis- 
tinctions are  vanishing  or  at  least  losing  something  of 
their  value.  We  look  forward  to  seeing  them  diminish 
still  more  in  number  and  in  importance.  But,  mean- 
while, it  is  easy  to  read  in  the  signs  of  the  time  a 
growing  impatience  with  all  these  peace-making,  com- 
promising processes.  Together  with  the  cry  against 
over- emphasis  on  the  unimportant  there  sounds  also  the 
deeper  note  of  warning  lest  we  forget  the  important.  In 
our  anxiety  not  to  exalt  the  temporary  we  are  in  danger, 
so  we  are  being  warned,  of  losing  sight  of  the  permanent. 
For  very  dread  of  non-essentials  we  must  not  diminish 
in  any  way  the  really  and  truly  essential.  In  a  word, 
the  conflict  of  our  day  is  not  so  much  whether  we  are 
to  be  sticklers  for  precious  trifles  or  nobly  superior  to 
them;  whether  we  are  to  reject  science  or  accept  it; 
whether  we  are  to  exalt  the  individual  thinker  or  show 
him  his  place  under  the  beneficent  direction  of  au- 
thority. It  is  rather  to  determine  what  things  are 
trifles,  precious  or  otherwise.  It  is  to  determine  the 
true  relation  between  exact  knowledge  and  a  worthy 
faith.  It  is  to  fix,  as  carefully  as  may  be,  a  just  pro- 
portion between  the  freedom  of  the  individual  and  the 


INTRODUCTION  3 

claim  of  authority,   under  whatever  form  it  may  be 
disguised. 

The  hope  of  the  future  does  not  lie  in  banishing 
conflict  from  the  world  of  rehgious  thought.  That  end 
could  be  accomplished  only  in  one  of  two  ways :  either 
by  a  decline  into  general  indifference,  or  by  subjecting 
all  thought  to  the  dictation  of  an  unquestioned  au- 
thority. Either  of  these  solutions  is  a  solution  of  de- 
spair. In  the  last  analysis  they  work  out  to  the  same 
dismal  result;  for  the  blind  acceptance  of  an  authority 
is  only  another  expression  of  personal  indifference. 
No,  the  hope  of  the  future  is  not  in  banishing  conflict. 
It  is  in  the  clearing  and  sharpening  of  the  greater  an- 
tagonisms, in  such  a  fixing  of  what  are  the  real  essen- 
tials, that  every  thinking  man  can  recognize  them  and 
give  his  allegiance  accordingly.  In  this  clearing  process 
the  lesser  and  the  fictitious  antagonisms  will  disappear. 
They  will  be  absorbed  in  the  really  great  distinctions, 
which  do  not  rest  upon  mere  logical  argument  or  upon 
a  higher  or  lower  culture,  but  upon  the  few  fundamental 
ideas  which  have  always  determined,  in  the  last  resort, 
the  attitude  of  religious  parties.  Men  will  learn  that 
when  they  discuss  whether  a  Christian  ought  to  be 
baptized  by  putting  water  on  his  head  or  by  plunging 
him  in  all  over,  they  are  wasting  their  time  in  a  futile 
game  of  words,  but  that  when  they  argue  over  again 


4  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  old  question  of  infant  or  adult  baptism  they  are 
dealing  with  a  point  of  living,  vital,  and  permanent 
interest. 

As  this  clarifying  process  goes  on  it  is  to  be  expected 
that  the  number  of  possible  groupings  of  men  in  re- 
ligious affairs  will  diminish.  As  occurs  in  political  life 
when  old  lines  of  party  division  have  become  obliterated 
by  the  growth  of  many  new  interests  that  do  not  fit 
into  the  normal  scheme  of  working  parties,  —  after  long 
years  of  confusion,  in  some  new  crisis  of  the  nation's 
life,  the  great,  permanent  issues  lead  again  to  new  and 
more  significant  re-formations,  —  so  it  must  be  with  the 
movement  of  religious  thought.  After  the  present  long 
interval  of  petty  sectarian  strife,  there  must  come  a 
readjustment  along  the  lines  of  real  and  permanent 
oppositions.  Men  will  see  that  after  all  the  minor 
compromises  have  been  made  there  remain  issues  on 
which  no  compromise  is  possible.  After  all  the  non- 
essentials have  been  eUminated,  there  remain  a  few 
things  on  w^hich  men  will  insist  as  essentials,  and  they 
will  insist  with  all  the  more  zeal  because  these  things  are 
few. 

It  is  too  early  as  yet  to  be  certain  as  to  the  signs  of 
this  approaching  readjustment.  It  is  customary  to 
point  to  the  conscious  efforts  at  Christian  unity  which 
many  spokesmen  of  many  sects  have  been  urging ;   but 


INTRODUCTION  5 

it  must  be  confessed  that  so  far  the  actual  results  of 
such  activity ' have  been  meagre  enough,  —  a  ''union 
church"  here  and  there  in  the  country,  a  softening  of 
the  language  of  controversy,  a  greater  readiness  to  co- 
operate in  works  of  humanity,  but  not  much  more.  Far 
more  obvious  is  the  attempt  on  the  part  of  existing  sects 
to  define  their  attitude  on  some  few  burning  questions 
in  such  a  way  as  to  hold  the  doubtful  allegiance  of  their 
members,  or,  in  extreme  cases,  even  to  force  a  severing 
of  that  allegiance.  Recent  heresy  trials  have  been  of 
real  service  in  showing  where  the  controlling  powers  in 
several  of  the  most  important  American  religious  bodies 
are  willing  to  make  their  stand  against  the  rising  tide  of 
serious  scientific  thought.  They  have  done  more  than 
this.  They  have  made  clear  how  large  and  respectable 
a  fraction  of  the  membership  in  all  the  ''orthodox" 
sects  is  retained  only  by  sacrifices  of  sincerity  which 
cannot  be  made  forever  with  impunity.  While  on  the 
one  hand  they  have  given  to  the  dominant  powers 
within  the  sects  a  security  they  have  long  been  lacking, 
they  have,  on  the  other  hand,  shown  to  the  hesitating 
minority  the  nature  of  the  sacrifices  they  have  been 
making  and  have  put  before  them  with  imperative  clear- 
ness the  question  how  long  they  are  willing  to  go  on 
making  them. 

It  is  in  the  hope  of  contributing  a  little  to  the  sola- 


6  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

tion  of  this  problem  in  some  individual  minds  that  these 
pages  have  been  written.  They  are  an  attempt  to  state 
clearly  the  attitude  of  mind  in  which  one  of  the  smallest 
of  the  Christian  bodies  that  have  come  into  existence 
with  the  Protestant  Reformation  stands  with  reference 
to  present-day  reUgious  questions.  This  volume  can- 
not in  any  sense  of  the  word  be  regarded  as  an  ofHcial 
utterance.  No  person  connected  with  the  administra- 
tion of  the  Unitarian  body  has  known  of  its  preparation. 
It  has  been  one  of  the  boasts  of  Unitarianism  that  it 
has  never  authorized  any  person  or  any  body  of  per- 
sons to  speak  for  it  in  any  formal  or  determinate  fashion. 
It  shares  with  Christianity  itself  the  proud  claim  of 
being  ever  incomplete  and  therefore  ever  ready  to  try 
new  aspects  of  truth  to  see  whether  they  be  in  harmony 
with  the  old  truths.  It  is  only  as  an  individual,  a 
layman  of  the  third  generation  of  American  Unitarians, 
that  the  author  ventures  to  give  expression  to  what  he 
believes  to  be,  on  the  whole,  the  consensus  of  Unitarians 
on  the  main  topics  of  rehgious  discussion. 

It  is  probably  true  that  there  are  few  statements  of 
opinion  made  here,  to  which  some  Unitarians  would 
not  take  exception.  There  are  certainly  many  state- 
ments with  which  many  non-Unitarians  would  be 
heartily  in  accord.  In  saying,  therefore,  as  must  fre- 
quently be  said,  "Unitarians  beUeve  this,  or  that,"  it 


INTRODUCTION  7 

is  not  implied  that  all  Unitarians  believe  this  in  pre- 
cisely this  way,  nor  is  it  suggested  that  only  Unitarians 
so  believe.  What  is  meant  is  that,  so  far  as  the  author 
can  judge,  the  aggregate  of  the  views  and  states  of 
mind  here  described  is  held  by  Unitarians  more  gener- 
ally, more  completely,  and  more  frankly  than  by  any 
one  else.  It  is  this  general  agreement  that  forms  the 
excuse  for  being  of  the  rehgious  association  which  tries 
to  perpetuate  and  to  extend  these  views  and  to  main- 
tain these  states  of  mind. 

There  are  two  criticisms  of  Unitarianism  so  frequently 
and  so  confidently  made  that  they  have  come  to  be 
the  commonplaces  of  remark  whenever  the  word  is 
mentioned.  One  of  these  criticisms  is  that  Unitarian- 
ism is  merely  a  kind  of  rehgious  philosophy.  The  other 
is  that  it  is  merely  a  system  of  morals.  Kindly  critics 
are  wilHng  to  add  that  it  is  a  philosophy  in  which  they 
find  much  to  admire  and  that  they  are  perfectly  willing 
to  hve  by  its  moral  system.  What  they  cannot  admit 
is,  that  it  has  any  claim  whatever  upon  them  as  a  form 
of  religion.  ' 'Unitarianism,"  it  has  often  been  said,  "is 
a  very  good  thing  to  live  by,  but  a  very  poor  thing  to 
die  by,"  the  implication  being,  we  may  suppose,  that 
the  crisis  of  physical  death  brings  a  man  into  some 
relation  with  God  essentially  different  from  that  which 
he  held  during  his  earthly  life.     It  is  like  the  feeling  of 


8  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

the  child  who  regularly  omitted  his  morning  prayer  on 
the  ground  that  he  could  take  care  of  himself  in  the 
daytime.  The  Unitarian,  believing  as  he  does  that  he 
is  as  much  bound  by  the  law  and  the  love  of  God  during 
the  daytime  of  Hfe  as  he  can  be  in  the  tender  darkness 
of  death,  draws  no  line  between  the  religion  by  which 
he  will  live  and  that  by  which  he  is  ready  to  die.  He 
needs  no  critic  to  inform  him  that  neither  philosophy 
nor  morality  makes  a  religion.  Only,  he  can  accept  no 
religion  which  goes  against  a  sound  philosophy  or  which 
tries  to  be  independent  of  an  imperative  morality. 

A  third  criticism  of  Unitarianism  is  that  it  is  a  mere 
bundle  of  negatives, — that  its  spirit  is  "that  which 
ever  denies,"  —  that  it  has  nothing  positive  to  offer, 
but  must  content  itself  with  always  being  in  the  oppo- 
sition. It  is  gently  admitted  that  in  fact  it  has  done 
good  service  in  this  kind.  Just  as  the  opposition  in  a 
ParHament  serves  the  nation  by  wise  and  continuous 
criticism  of  the  power  actually  responsible  for  govern- 
ment, so,  it  is  admitted,  Unitarianism  has  put  a  finger 
on  many  a  weak  spot  in  the  doctrine  and  the  practice 
of  other  Christian  bodies  greatly  to  their  advantage 
and  to  its  own  credit.  With  this  negative  praise  Uni- 
tarians have  been  fain  to  be  content,  but  it  in  no  way 
expresses  their  own  view  of  themselves.  It  is  true 
that  they  have  been  compelled  by  the  very  nature  of 


INTRODUCTION  9 

the  case  to  express  themselves  often  in  the  language  of 
negation.  They  have  done  this  because  it  was  the 
only  way  in  which  they  could  make  their  position  clear. 
Their  opponents  had  possession  of  the  field.  It  was 
they,  the  opponents,  who  had  tied  themselves  up  in  a 
tangle  of  ideas  largely  negations  of  primitive  and  simple 
Christianity ;  so  that  there  was  no  other  way  of  re- 
asserting great  positive  truths  than  to  deny  these. 
The  truths  asserted  and  reasserted  were  none  the  less 
positive  on  this  account.  Unitarians  know  perfectly 
well  that  nothing  can  live  upon  negations.  No  organi- 
zation can  serve  even  as  a  refuge  from  others  unless  it 
can  show  its  right  to  exist  by  offering  positive  and  per- 
manent principles,  by  which  it  is  ready  to  stand  or  fall. 
The  following  pages  have  been  written  with  these 
three  criticisms  constantly  before  the  author's  mind. 
He  hopes  to  have  shown  that  Unitarianism  is  so  truly 
a  form  of  religion  that  it  ought  to  satisfy  those  who 
make  the  highest  demand  upon  the  religious  life.  By 
religion  the  Unitarian  means  a  recognized  dependence 
of  man  upon  the  power  greater  than  himself  which  he 
feels  at  the  heart  of  things,  animating,  guiding,  recon- 
ciling all  by  the  action  of  a  will  that  is  neither  above 
law  nor  subject  to  it,  but  is  itself  Law.  If  he  stopped 
here,  he  would  indeed  incur  the  charge  of  being  sat- 
isfied with  a  rather  abstract  philosophical  scheme.     He 


lO  IXITARIAX   THOUGHT 

adds  to  Ills  delinition  the  element  of  personal  service. 
Toward  this  power  he  feels  those  sentiments  of  devo- 
tion, of  gratitude,  of  duty,  of  dependence,  which  lead  to 
rational  worship  on  the  one  hand  and  to  right  deahng 
with  liis  fellow-man  on  the  other.  Thus  his  philosophy 
and  liis  morals  grow  rationally  and  essentially  out  of 
liis  rehgion.  In  it  they  find  their  explanation  and  their 
support.  Lacking  this  purely  rehgious  element,  philoso- 
phy would  be  to  liim  a  barren  abstraction  and  morality 
a  heartless  code. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  NATURE   OF  BELIEF 

How  happy  is  he  born  and  taught, 

That  serveth  not  another's  will, 
Whose  armour  is  his  honest  thought 

And  simple  truth  his  utmost  skill. 

—  Sir  Henry  Wotton. 

If  there  is  anything  peculiar  in  the  mental  attitude  of 
Unitarians  toward  religious  questions,  it  is  to  be  found 
in  their  understanding  of  what  constitutes  beUef.  There 
is  no  word  that  we  use  more  readily  or  less  carefully. 
We  say  we  ^'beheve"  things  that  vary  so  widely  in  their 
nature  and  content  as  to  have  no  common  groimd  on 
which  behef  in  them  can  be  based.  We  believe  in  our 
own  existence ;  we  beheve  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow ; 
we  believe  in  virtue  and  in  a  high  tariff.  We  believe 
that  Napoleon  invaded  Russia,  that  Alexander  was  a 
great  general,  that  all  men  were  created  free  and  equal, 
that  Jesus  turned  water  into  wine,  and  so  on  indefinitely. 
If  we  inquire  into  the  reasons  for  these  several  ''beliefs," 
we  discover  at  once  that  they  rest  upon  the  widest 
diversity  of  evidence.  The  mental  process  which  as- 
sures us  that  the  sun  will  rise  to-morrow  will  give  us  no 

II 


12  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

comfort  as  to  the  certainty  of  our  own  existence,  nor  as 
to  the  blessings  of  a  protective  tariff.  We  may  establish 
to  our  satisfaction  the  Napoleonic  invasion  of  Russia, 
but  the  kind  of  evidence  that  satisfies  us  here  will  not 
convince  us  of  the  freedom  and  equality  of  all  men. 
Belief,  as  we  loosely  employ  the  word,  seems  to  rest  upon 
an  almost  infinite  variety  of  kinds  of  evidence  having 
little  or  no  relation  with  each  other.  The  only  thing 
common  to  them  is  the  certainty  of  the  conviction  they 
bring.  If  the  particular  evidence  is  only  strong  enough, 
we  can,  for  practical  purposes,  be  just  as  sure  of  one  kind 
of  fact  as  of  another. 

We  are  concerned  here  with  religious  beliefs,  and  it  is 
therefore  of  the  first  importance  that  we  should  be  clear 
at  the  outset  what  we  mean  by  belief  as  applied  to  reli- 
gious matters.  We  are  inclined  to  say  at  first  thought 
that  all  behef  must  rest  upon  evidence,  but  it  needs  only 
a  moment's  observation  to  convince  us  that  in  fact  this 
is  not  true.  An  immense  proportion  of  the  most  cher- 
ished beliefs  of  mankind  rest,  not  upon  evidence,  but 
upon  a  great  variety  of  other  sanctions.  Chief  of  these 
is  the  force  of  tradition.  We  believe  things  because  per- 
sons in  whom  we  '^beheve"  have  taught  us  that  they 
are  true.  By  far  the  larger  part  of  this  teaching  is  im- 
personal and  involuntary.  We  get  such  ideas,  we  say, 
by  inheritance  or  by  suggestion,  and  this  suggestion  comes 


THE  NATURE  OF   BELIEF  13 

largely  from  the  same  persons  from  whom  we  may  inherit 
our  instincts.  Or,  we  take  our  beliefs  from  the  human 
society  in  which  we  happen  to  be  placed.  There  are 
family  beliefs,  race  beliefs,  national  beliefs,  intense  often 
in  proportion  to  the  absence  of  any  reflection  on  our 
own  part.  When  we  begin  to  reflect  upon  or  inquire 
into  such  beh'efs,  we  almost  certainly  weaken  their  hold 
on  our  allegiance. 

This  is  eminently  true  of  religious  beliefs.  Religion 
in  many  of  its  most  impressive  forms  has  been  a  thing  of 
traditions.  It  has  belonged  to  races  and  nations  as  a 
part  of  their  common  possession.  It  was  theirs,  not  by 
virtue  of  any  personal  conviction  on  the  part  of  indi- 
viduals that  this  rehgion  was  ''true,"  but  because  of  its 
divine  institution  certified  by  signs  and  wonders,  declared 
by  prophetic  utterance,  demonstrated  by  success  in 
war  and  prosperity  in  peace.  Not  to  accept  it  would  be 
to  declare  oneself  outside  the  racial  bond  within  which 
alone  a  proper  relation  with  the  gods  was  possible.  But 
then  have  come  times  when  men  began  to  speculate  about 
the  foundations  of  their  rehgious  beliefs,  when  traditions 
have  no  longer  sufficed,  and  when  leaders  of  thought 
have  arisen  to  remind  men  that,  after  all,  back  of  all 
racial  claims  there  lay  deep,  permanent  instincts  of  the 
individual  man  calling  upon  him  to  make  clear  to  him- 
self his  own  personal  relation  to  the  unseen  world  of 


14  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

spirit.  It  is  on  such  individual  appeal  that  the  great 
universal  religions  have  based  their  hold  upon  the 
allegiance  of  mankind.  They  begin  by  challenging  the 
claims  of  the  existing  racial  systems  through  their  bold 
assertion  of  certain  principles  for  which  they  ask  ac- 
ceptance from  individuals.  With  them  there  comes  an 
entirely  new  idea  into  the  world,  —  the  idea  of  personal 
rehgious  conviction.  Whoever  accepts  their  teaching 
must  do  so  on  the  ground  of  some  individual  satisfac- 
tion he  finds  in  it  and  which  he  does  not  find  elsewhere. 
The  Buddhist,  the  Mohammedan,  and  the  Christian 
alike  reject  all  religions  but  their  own,  because  in  each 
case  the  appeal  is  absolute.  What  gives  it  its  peculiar 
force  is  precisely  that  it  addresses  itself  to  the  indi- 
vidual soul.  It  is  not  possible  for  the  true  follower  of 
a  universal  religion  to  shelter  himself  behind  racial  or 
national  institutions.  He  must,  especially  in  every 
moment  of  stress,  stand  out  for  himself  from  the  mass 
of  his  fellow-believers  and  confess  himself  individually 
to  the  following  of  the  principles  on  which  the  religion 
he  professes  is  founded.  For  the  Christian  it  was  the 
following  of  the  Cross. 

But  now,  when  a  man  stands  out  thus  naked  and 
alone  to  confess  his  belief  in  a  religious  system,  how 
shall  he  give  account  to  himself  and  to  others  of  the 
belief  that  is  in  him?     It  must  rest  upon  something. 


THE   NATURE  OF  BELIEF  1 5 

It  is  never  quite  enough  that  he  repeat  the  formula : 
''IbeHeve."  It  cannot  long  satisfy  even  himself;  for 
it  lies  in  the  very  nature  of  a  belief  of  conviction  that 
it  shall  have  some  means  of  accounting  for  itself.  That 
is  what  constitutes  the  difference  between  such  belief 
and  the  merely  accepted  forms  of  tribal  worship.  True, 
the  martyr  of  the  Cross  might  go  steadily  to  his  death 
for  the  mere  glory  of  ^'The  Name."  It  was  his  busi- 
ness, not  to  define,  but  to  suffer.  But  meanwhile, 
wherever  the  Christian  message  had  gone,  other  men 
were  elaborating  its  defence,  giving  the  grounds  of  their 
adherence  to  it,  and  thus  preparing  the  way  for  thou- 
sands more  who  might  be  won  by  their  appeal.  That 
is  the  Christian  ^'Apology,"  the  definition  of  what 
Christians  in  the  growing  period  of  the  Church's  life 
were  willing  to  stand  by  and  the  declaration  of  the 
bases  on  which  that  willingness  rested.  It  is  a  curious 
hterature,  singularly  mingled  of  wide  learning,  glowing 
faith  in  the  highest  spiritual  truth,  childish  credulity, 
fanatical  enthusiasm,  and  plain  common  sense.  The 
grounds  upon  which  the  writers  based  their  faith  are 
manifold  in  their  variety,  but  they  may  readily  be  re- 
duced to  two.  The  appeal  is  made  either  to  the  sup- 
port of  authority  or  to  the  witness  of  the  "Spirit."  As 
a  rule  the  two  are  hopelessly  entangled  in  the  argu- 
ment, but  we  can  generally  separate  them  sufficiently 


l6  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

to  make  it  clear  to  ourselves  that  the  minds  of  men 
were  working  along  these  two  lines. 

Even  from  the  very  beginning  this  mingling  of  the 
two  processes  is  clearly  to  be  seen.  The  teaching  of 
Jesus  was  accepted,  not  on  its  merits  alone.  It  was  true, 
because  in  Jesus  men  saw  the  fulfilment  of  Jewish 
prophecy,  or  because  it  was  accompanied  by  miracu- 
lous occurrences,  or  because  it  promised  relief  from  the 
miseries  of  life.  The  test  of  its  real  power  came  when 
men  began  to  see  that  Jewish  prophecy  was  not  being 
fulfilled,  that  the  working  of  natural  law  was  not  per- 
manently to  be  interfered  with,  and  that  Hfe  had  as 
many  miseries  as  ever.  Then  it  became  evident  that 
back  of  all  these  superficial  motives  there  lay  and  had 
lain  from  the  beginning  a  profound  appeal  to  that  other 
witness  for  which  we  have  no  other  name  than  the 
witness  of  the  Spirit.  So  it  has  been  ever  since.  As 
soon  as  there  was  an  accepted  record  of  the  sayings  of 
Jesus,  these  were  pointed  to  as  authority.  Even  earlier 
perhaps  there  were  writings  of  his  first  followers,  that 
served  the  same  purpose  of  appeal.  Then  these  were 
repeated  and  commented  upon,  and  each  generation  of 
comment  added  so  much  to  the  volume  of  evidence  that 
could  be  quoted  in  support  of  the  faith.  Then  there 
grew  along  with  this  body  of  written  authority  an 
organization  of  men,  at  first  for  the  guidance  and  pro- 


THE  NATURE  OF   BELIEF  1 7 

tection  of  the  scattered  and  doubtful  followers  of  the 
Master,  but  soon  also  for  their  government.  The  inter- 
pretation of  the  written  and  oral  tradition  passed  into 
the  hands  of  this  organization,  and  when  this  had  been 
done  there  was  henceforth  a  visible  and  tangible  human 
authority  to  which  appeal  might  be  taken  on  every 
doubtful  point. 

That  is  in  a  word  the  history  of  the  growth  within 
Christianity  of  the  principle  of  authority  in  belief.  It 
was  a  process  only  too  fatally  easy  to  justify.  It  was 
supported,  honestly  and  eagerly,  by  all  that  element  in 
the  Christian  society  which  valued  above  all  else  order 
and  regularity.  ^Xanonicity"  became  a  word  of  su- 
preme importance.  Canons  of  belief,  canons  of  dis- 
cipline, canons  of  worship,  were  piled  up  one  upon  an- 
other into  a  portentous  system,  the  limits  of  which  no 
man  could  define  or  foresee.  Out  of  the  wide-open 
democracy  of  the  earliest  Church  there  was  developed 
the  oligarchy  of  the  episcopate  and  then,  in  the  Roman 
world,  the  monarchy  of  the  Papacy,  as  the  most  con- 
crete expression  of  the  principle  of  authority.  There 
was  no  point  of  doctrine  or  of  organization  upon  which 
an  absolute  decision  could  not  be  reached  through  an 
appeal  to  the  supreme  disposer  of  all  the  interests  of 
Christianity. 

The  Great  Release  of  the  Protestant  Reformation  did 


1 8  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

not,  on  its  formal  side,  produce  any  immediate  or  de- 
cided change.  The  appeal  to  authority  was  necessary 
to  give  countenance  to  the  Reformers  as  being  men  of 
caution  and  prudence  rather  than  men  of  turmoil  and 
rebellion.  The  only  immediate  difference  was  that  they 
substituted  for  the  authority  of  a  human  ruler  the 
authority  of  an  unchanging  book.  It  seemed  as  if  the 
minds  of  men  were  to  be  bound  again  in  a  slavery  as 
much  worse  than  the  former  as  the  authority  was  more 
rigid.  So  far  as  the  formal  attitude  of  the  reformed 
churches  went,  there  was  certainly  little  cause  for  con- 
gratulation. But  then  came  out  what  had  always  been 
latent  in  the  principle  of  Christianity  itself.  Deep 
under  all  the  bitter  conflicts  of  the  two  confessions  as 
to  the  merits  of  their  respective  authorities  there  ran 
now  an  ever-widening  and  strengthening  current  of 
thought  independent  of  them  both.  More  and  more 
men  began  to  call  upon  the  silent  witness  of  the  ''Spirit" 
as  the  true  basis  of  religious  faith.  And,  as  they  sought 
to  work  themselves  out  into  clearness  along  this  road, 
they  found,  looking  back,  that  they  were  only  the 
latest  prophets  in  a  series  unbroken  from  the  beginning. 
The  authorities  had  tried  in  vain  to  quench  the  Spirit. 
Their  seductions  and  their  terrors  alike  had  failed  to 
repress  the  invincible  instinct  of  the  human  soul  to  seek 
its  deepest  satisfactions  in  its  own  way. 


THE  NATURE  OF  BELIEF  19 

Thus  the  attitude  of  Unitarians  toward  the  whole  sub- 
ject of  belief  is  historically  prepared  for.  They  confess 
themselves  in  the  fellowship  of  those  who  in  all  ages 
have  tried  to  maintain  the  rights  of  the  Spirit  as 
against  the  claims  of  authority,  no  matter  by  what 
name  this  may  have  been  called.  They  realize  per- 
fectly hov7  appealing  the  claim  of  authority  is,  how  it 
helps  to  solve  all  doubts,  reconcile  all  oppositions,  and 
leave  the  individual  free  to  devote  himself  to  the  prac- 
tical sides  of  religion  without  troubling  himself  about 
the  real  bases  of  his  faith.  They  see  all  this,  but  it 
appears  to  them  to  be  a  subtle  form  of  temptation  to 
intellectual  and  spiritual  sloth.  Those  who  yield  to  it 
seem  to  them  to  be  seeking  the  lower  kinds  of  satis- 
faction, to  be  evading  a  responsibihty  that  is  laid  upon 
them  by  the  possession  of  an  intellectual  and  spiritual 
nature  of  their  own,  a  nature  so  emphatically  their  own 
that  they  cannot  entrust  its  highest  satisfactions  to 
the  care  of  any  one  else.  This  is  what  they  mean  by 
the  sanctions  of  the  Spirit.  This  word  ''Spirit"  is  a 
large  word,  comprehending  so  much  that  it  may  readily 
be  misunderstood  as  expressing  little  or  nothing.  It  is 
open  to  the  charge  of  vagueness,  and  it  is  therefore  in- 
cumbent upon  those  who  use  it  to  make  it  as  definite 
as  they  can. 

The  more  general  definition  of  the  Spirit,  as  we  are 


20  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

now  using  the  word,  has  already  been  given.  It  is  the 
opposite  of  authority.  It  is  that  silent  witness  to  the 
truth  whereby  we  become  certain  of  things  that  we  can- 
not otherwise  prove.  We  are,  indeed,  helped  and  com- 
forted if  we  can  find  that  others  are  impressed  by  these 
same  truths.  Especially  if  we  can  find  ourselves  sup- 
ported by  a  long  series  of  similar  experiences,  we  are  so 
much  the  more  confident  that  the  witness  we  are  bound 
to  believe  is  not  a  false  witness  and  that  we  ourselves 
are  not  abnormal  in  our  ways  of  reaching  truth.  But, 
if  such  support  fails  us,  if  we  have  to  stand  alone  in  our 
own  day  and  can  find  no  fellowship  in  the  past,  still  we 
are  none  the  less  bound.  We  may  revise  our  own 
thought  as  often  and  as  carefully  as  we  will.  We 
may  humble  ourselves  as  much  as  we  can  before  the 
teaching  of  those  who  ought  to  be  better  and  wiser 
than  we ;  but,  after  all,  if  it  comes  to  standing  alone  with 
the  witness  of  the  Spirit  on  our  side,  we  dare  not  shel- 
ter ourselves  behind  the  wisdom  or  the  virtue  of  all  the 
ages.  The  armor  of  our  honest  thought  must  suffice  for 
us  against  all  temptations  to  the  comforts  of  conform- 
ity. This  independence  of  all  formal  authority  is  thus 
the  Unitarian's  first  demand  as  he  approaches  the 
subject  of  religious  belief. 

The  second  is  that  religious  truth  shall  not  conflict 
with  any  other,  or  with  all  other  forms  of  truth.     He 


THE   NATURE  OF   BELIEF  21 

does  not  mean  by  this  that  it  shall  be  subject  to  the 
same  kind  of  tests.  He  is  quite  aware  that  it  cannot 
be  demonstrated  like  a  proposition  in  mathematics.  It 
cannot  be  illustrated  by  experiment  or  observation  like 
an  alleged  fact  of  natural  science.  It  cannot  be  proved 
by  syllogisms  like  a  thesis  in  formal  logic.  It  cannot  be 
established  by  human  witness  like  an  event  in  history 
or  a  document  in  law.  The  witness  of  the  Spirit  is 
something  different  from  all  these.  And  yet  we  have  a 
right  to  demand  that  it  shall  not  contradict  any  one  or 
all  of  them.  The  Unitarian  could  not  accept  a  rehgious 
statement  which  would  imply  that  two  and  two  made 
five,  or  that  the  same  matter  could  be  in  two  places  at 
the  same  time.  He  cannot  beheve  that  from  sound 
premises  there  can  follow  a  false  conclusion,  nor  would 
he  accept  a  statement  of  fact  within  the  range  of  human 
competency  if  it  were  contradicted  by  credible  human 
evidence.  To  do  any  of  these  things  would  be  to  act 
against  his  fundamental  conviction  of  the  unity  of  all 
truth.  As  he  approaches  any  given  proposition  in 
rehgion  he  tests  it  by  its  agreement  with  this  basic  law. 
If  it  violates  this,  then,  no  matter  how  strongly  it  may 
appeal  to  his  sentiment,  he  must  reject  or  modify  it. 

Another  demand  that  the  Unitarian  makes  upon  be- 
lief is  that  it  shall  come  to  him  with  an  imperative 
command  resulting  from  the  nature  of  the  behef  itself. 


22  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

In  other  words,  he  reacts  with  a  certain  horror  from 
every  suggestion  of  "the  will  to  believe."  He  recog- 
nizes, indeed,  a  certain  attitude  of  mind  or  of  temper 
which  might  be  called  "the  will  not  to  believe  anything," 
and  he  is  quite  willing  to  condemn  this  attitude  as  sub- 
versive of  all  intelligent  approach  to  truth.  To  beUeve 
nothing  is  as  vacant  as  to  believe  everything.  In  neither 
of  these  ways  can  the  self-respecting  mind  arrive  at 
any  conclusions  worth  having.  The  writer  recalls  hear- 
ing a  highly  educated  man  declare  that  he  could  see  no 
reason  whatever  why  he  should  have  any  opinions  on 
the  current  subjects  of  religious  discussion.  Such 
matters  were  well  enough  for  theologians,  whose  special 
business  they  were,  but  for  him  they  were  matters  of 
entire  indifference.  This  man,  scholar,  head  of  a  family, 
good  citizen,  no  mean  artist,  could  not  see  that  religious 
convictions,  no  matter  how  reasonable  they  might  be, 
had  any  bearing  whatever  upon  the  course  of  his  daily 
life  and  duty.  In  him  the  will  not  to  beHeve  could  not 
have  any  immediately  dangerous  consequences,  but  in  a 
life  less  firmly  planted  in  practical  responsibihties  it 
may  readily  lead  to  the  grossest  extravagance. 

That  is  not  the  Unitarian's  attitude.  On  the  con- 
trary, he  has  the  most  eager  will  to  be  a  believer.  To 
go  back  to  our  first  use  of  the  word,  he  "believes"  in 
belief.     Without  it  men  seem  to  him  to  be  drifting  on  a 


THE  NATURE  OF   BELIEF 


23 


sea  of  careless  impulses,  carrying  them  no  whither, 
stranding  them,  now  on  this  shallow,  now  on  that,  until 
their  hves  are  wrecked  in  hopeless  confusion.  But  — 
and  here  is  the  whole  point  of  the  Unitarian  position  — 
when  it  comes  to  specific  behefs,  the  behef  in  a  certain 
definite  proposition,  then  he  cannot  for  a  moment  admit 
the  right  of  the  will  to  have  anything  to  say  in  the 
matter.  To  say  that  one  believes  a  thing  because  one 
wishes  to  beheve  it  seems  to  him  to  be  mere  foolish- 
ness. It  is  to  him  a  denial  of  everything  that  makes 
up  the  idea  of  behef.  Such  an  attitude  of  the  mind  — 
if  it  can  be  called  mind  —  he  regards  as  the  very  nega- 
tion of  intelligence.  On  this  basis  the  beliefs  of  the 
world  would  have  no  other  foundation  than  the  shift- 
ing volitions  of  those  who  profess  them.  Behef  would 
be  a  mere  matter  of  taste  or  whim:  I  like  a  thing; 
therefore  I  believe  it.  True  it  undoubtedly  is  that 
what  passes  for  belief  is  only  too  often  so  entangled 
with  our  wishes  and  our  fancies  that  its  real  nature  is 
concealed  even  from  ourselves.  The  mere  wish  to 
agree  with  those  we  esteem  modifies  our  expressions  of 
behef,  often  to  such  a  degree  that  we  let  ourselves  be 
deceived  as  to  what  we  are  really  beheving.  It  is  quite 
possible  for  us  to  go  on  declaring  our  beliefs  in  language 
that  only  serves  to  hide  the  actual  currents  of  our 
thought.     We  use  our  wills  consciously  to  repress  un- 


24  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

comfortable  stirrings  of  our  intellectual  or  higher  spirit- 
ual nature  lest  these  may  become  so  strong  as  to  inter- 
fere with  the  calm  current  of  our  conformity.  We  lull 
ourselves  into  inaction  by  declaring  that  in  these  matters 
certainty  is  impossible  and  that  we  may  as  well  hold 
the  popular  errors  as  invent  others  of  our  own. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  in  all  these  ways  the 
will  to  believe  is  bound  to  affect  us  more  or  less;  but 
this  cannot  alter  the  essential  folly  of  the  process.  It 
is  a  process  of  evasion  and  denial.  It  cannot  lead  to 
constructive  results.  It  is  made  up  of  compromises  and 
half-waynesses.  It  diverts  attention  from  the  actual, 
positive  needs  of  the  individual  to  the  minor  considera- 
tions of  expediency  or  beauty  or  order  or  the  seductive 
charm  of  agreement  with  the  multitude.  There  can  be 
no  more  mischievous  perversion  of  all  that  makes  belief 
worth  having  than  this  persistent  subjectivity  of  ap- 
proach to  it.  If  it  is  folly  in  him  who  practises  it,  it 
is  something  worse  in  him  who  teaches  it.  The  Uni- 
tarian should  be  the  last  to  allow  his  beliefs  to  be  resolved 
into  a  mere  matter  of  fancies  and  habits.  They  are  not 
things  that  can  be  disposed  of  in  any  such  summary 
way.  They  are  the  thing  most  precious  to  him  of  all 
his  ideal  possessions,  and  he  must  be  prepared  to  defend 
them  by  some  argument  better  than  his  own  preference 
or  the  automatic  action  of  his  mind. 


THE  NATURE  OF   BELIEF  25 

But,  if  he  may  not  appeal  to  authority,  if  he  may  not 
select  his  beliefs  according  to  his  tastes,  where  shall  the 
Unitarian  find  the  sanctions  that  will  satisfy  him? 
Unitarianism  is  often  charged  with  being  mere  cold 
intellectualism,  as  if  it  believed  that  religious  truth 
rested  wholly  upon  intellectual  satisfactions.  This 
charge  it  distinctly  denies.  None  knows  better  than 
the  Unitarian  that  the  mind  alone  is  incapable  of  work- 
ing itself  out  to  conclusions  that  deserve  the  name  of 
religious.  All  that  he  demands  is  that  his  intellect, 
because  it  is  a  part  of  the  divine  gift  to  man,  shall  not 
be  degraded  and  insulted  by  being  asked  to  accept 
things  that  are  contrary  to  its  normal  processes.  In  his 
belief  his  intellect  must  have  its  rights,  and  so  long  as 
this  is  denied  him,  he  cannot  dignify  propositions  with 
the  name  of  beliefs.  They  may  be  sentiments,  impulses, 
feelings,  fancies,  —  what  you  please,  only  not  beliefs. 
The  word  he  likes  best  in  this  connection  is  reason,  and 
by  reason  he  means,  not  any  definable  process  of  reason- 
ing, not  dialectics,  but  that  just  balancing  of  all  con- 
siderations which  results  in  ''reasonableness."  This  is 
what  reason  —  the  ratio  of  the  schools  —  has  always 
meant,  when  it  was  not  perverted  to  the  uses  of  some 
hair-spHtting  faction.  It  means  that  enlightenment  of 
the  human  soul  which  frees  it  from  the  shadows  of  all 
perversions  and  distortions,  which  lifts  it  up  above  the 


26  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

reach  of  all  lower  motives  into  the  clearer  air  of  a  calm 
certainty  that  nothing  can  confuse  or  diminish. 

In  this  higher  reason,  the  intellect  has  indeed  its 
part,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  of  it.  Religion  is  primarily 
a  thing  of  the  emotions,  and  these  have  their  seat,  not 
in  that  part  of  man  we  call  the  intellect,  but  in  that 
still  vaguer  region  we  call  the  soul.  Precisely  where 
the  line  is  to  be  drawn  between  these  two  we  do  not 
know.  The  mind  is  undoubtedly  influenced  in  its  con- 
clusions by  the  working  of  our  emotional  nature.  Our 
emotions  partake  also  of  the  intellectual  within  us. 
Without  its  guiding  and  controlling  force,  the  emotions 
would  run  riot,  conflicting  with  each  other  in  a  chaos 
of  misrule.  Without  them  the  reasoning  powers  would 
work  themselves  out  to  sterile  conclusions.  If  a  re- 
ligious proposition  commends  itself  to  but  one  of  these 
sides  of  our  perceptive  capacity,  it  remains  barren,  un- 
related to  all  the  rest  of  us,  a  something  separate  from 
that  sum  total  of  our  quahties  we  call  ourself.  Such 
has  not  infrequently  been  the  apparent  solution  of  the 
religious  problem.  Men  have  fancied  they  were  ele- 
vating religion  when  they  set  it  thus  outside  their  real 
every-day  self.  They  felt  this  because  of  a  deep-seated 
distrust  of  themselves  as  unworthy  beings  —  vessels  of 
wrath,  or  what  not,  so  that  rehgion  came  to  seem  a 
thing  foreign  to  their  essential  humanity. 


THE  NATURE  OF   BELIEF  27 

Now  here  the  Unitarian  feels  himself  to  be  on  ground 
that  is  quite  his  own.  He  does  not  believe  himself  to 
be  an  altogether  unworthy  factor  in  the  good  world  of 
God,  and  therefore  he  is  not  afraid  to  trust  himself  to 
the  leadings  of  his  own  best  thought  and  feeling.  When 
he  says  he  believes  a  thing,  he  means  that  this  thing 
appeals  to  all  that  is  best  in  the  whole  man  that  he  is. 
The  highest  sanction  he  can  find  for  his  beliefs  is  in  the 
inner  witness  of  his  own  enlightened  reason  and  his  own 
disciplined  emotion.  Through  these,  and  through  these 
alone,  he  hears  that  convincing  voice  which  he  cannot 
otherwise  define  except  as  the  voice  of  the  spirit  of  all 
truth.  That  in  more  precise  definition  is  the  witness  of 
the  Spirit,  which  we  have  been  setting  over  against  the 
evidence  of  authority  and  the  power  of  tradition.  It 
means  to  the  Unitarian  the  highest  and  the  most  sacred 
of  all  sanctions.  By  it  he  tries  and  measures  all  au- 
thorities and  all  traditions.  Whenever,  for  example,  the 
Church,  most  ancient  and  reverend  of  authorities,  the 
depositary  of  the  most  sacred  and  most  certain  of  tradi- 
tions, asks  him  to  accept  this  or  that  proposition  as  true, 
he  cannot  do  otherwise  than  submit  it  to  the  test  of  its 
agreement  with  this  supreme  judgment  of  the  Spirit 
coming  to  him  through  the  agency  of  his  own  highest 
powers  of  mind  and  heart  and  soul.  He  uses  these 
words  —  mind,  heart,  soul  —  because  they  are  the  cur- 


28  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

rent  coin  of  discussion  in  these  subjects,  but  all  he  means 
by  them  is  that  taken  together  they  represent  himself. 
In  the  last  resort,  he  must  rely  upon  his  own  powers  of 
spiritual  perception  to  interpret  to  him  the  ways  of  God 
with  men.  If  they  cannot  do  it,  then  nothing  can  do  it. 
What  comes  to  him  in  this  way  as  true,  is  true  to  him, 
and  beyond  this  he  cannot  go.  It  is  not  his  concern 
whether  it  be  true  to  some  one  else ;  for  that  he  is  not 
responsible.  Neither  is  he  answerable  for  the  absolute 
truth  as  it  exists  "in  the  mind  of  God."  All  he  can  do 
as  an  honest  man  is  to  examine  with  all  seriousness  his 
own  thought  and  feeling,  get  all  the  light  upon  it  he  can 
from  every  worthy  source,  and  then,  in  all  humihty, 
confess  what  he  finds  there  as  for  the  time  being  his 
belief. 

These  are  the  premises  from  which  the  Unitarian 
goes  on  to  make  clear  to  himself  his  thought  upon 
the  several  topics  which  make  up  the  sum  of  Christian 
faith.  In  so  far  as  these  premises  are  sound,  the  con- 
clusions set  forth  in  the  following  chapters  will  have 
weight;  in  so  far  as  they  are  weak,  those  conclusions 
will  be  open  to  a  just  criticism. 


CHAPTER  II 

MIRACLE 

And  so  no  more  our  hearts  shall  plead 

For  miracle  and  sign; 

Thy  order  and  thy  faithfulness 

Are  all  in  all  divine. 

—  /.  W.  Chadwick, 

There  are  some  words  in  the  traditional  language  of 
theology  for  which  Unitarians  have  an  affectionate  re- 
gard. They  would  be  glad  to  retain  them  as  aids  to 
their  own  thought,  and  they  do  retain  them,  stripping 
away  from  them,  so  far  as  they  can,  the  false  and  dis- 
torted notions  that  have  become  attached  to  them,  and 
giving  to  them  larger  and  truer  meanings  in  harmony 
with  their  own  principles  of  interpretation.  Such  words 
are,  for  example  ''revelation"  and  ''inspiration,"  with 
which  we  deal  in  another  chapter.  These  are  words 
permitting  various  interpretations,  but  conveying,  no 
matter  under  what  distortion,  always  a  similar  idea. 
Unitarians  insist,  indeed,  upon  such  definitions  of  these 
words  as  give  to  them,  in  their  opinion,  the  deepest 
significance ;  but  they  recognize  the  value  and  the  histor- 
ical importance  of  the  definitions  opposed  to  their  own. 

The  word  "miracle"  is  not  such  a  word.     It  has, 

29 


3©  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

historically  and  actually,  but  one  rational  meaning.  In 
that  meaning  it  has  always  been  used  for  the  purposes 
of  Christian  argument,  and  the  moment  we  depart  from 
this  usage  by  ever  so  slight  a  shade  we  are  in  another 
world  of  thought.  Yet  there  is  hardly  a  word  in  the 
vocabulary  of  Christian  speculation  with  which  such 
tricks  of  interpretation  have  been  played  as  with  this. 
In  their  desire  to  hold  fast  the  something  good  that 
might  be  hidden  under  it,  men  have  tried  consciously 
to  pack  meanings  into  the  word  "miracle,"  that  were 
never  dreamed  of  by  the  authorities  on  whom  they 
have  imagined  themselves  to  be  resting.  It  is  there- 
fore especially  important  for  the  Unitarian  to  set  him- 
self right  on  this  point  at  an  early  stage.  As  he  looks 
over  the  history  of  the  thought  of  Christians  about  the 
miraculous,  he  finds  two  aspects  of  it  that  have  per- 
sistently kept  their  place.  First,  he  finds  that  Chris- 
tians, like  the  men  of  other  reHgions  from  whom  they 
derived  their  ideas,  were  always  reluctant  to  accept  the 
notion  of  a  universe  of  law  and  order  in  which  the  fives 
of  men  were  to  be  included.  If  there  were  any  such 
region  at  all,  where  law  could  be  thought  of  as  prevail- 
ing, it  was  the  world  of  "nature"  conceived  as  some- 
thing outside  of  and  beyond  human  experience.  Man 
must  be  kept  independent  of  such  restraints.  Wherever 
he  came  into  contact  with  that  other  world  of  law, 


MIRACLE  31 

some  kind  of  exemption  must  be  his  peculiar  privilege. 
To  make  him  subject  to  any  fixed  system  of  adminis- 
tering the  universe  seemed  to  be  an  infringement  upon 
the  Hberty  which  was  his  birthright.  That  is  one  of 
the  presuppositions  of  the  miraculous  :  the  necessity  of 
keeping  man  free  from  any  inevitable  law. 

The  second  is  that  divine  power,  existing  outside  the 
world  of  nature  and  man,  reserved  to  itself  the  right  of 
arbitrary  interference  in  the  ordinary  working  of  ''natu- 
ral" law,  and  this  for  some  purpose  connected  with  the 
spiritual  life  of  man.  God  acted  upon  man's  powers 
of  apprehending  divine  things  through  occasional  and 
direct  manifestation  of  himself  in  dramatic  form.  Such 
interference  was  conceived  of  as  proof  of  the  special 
divine  nature  of  the  idea  or  the  lesson  with  which  it 
was  associated  —  a  certificate,  so  to  speak,  that  here 
was  indeed  a  divine  communication  to  man.  Upon 
these  two  ideas  —  the  possibility  of  a  special  divine  in- 
terruption in  the  ordinary  course  of  a  universe  separate 
from  the  God  who  rules  it,  and  the  necessity  of  such 
occasional  interruption  in  order  to  give  a  stamp  of 
authenticity  to  alleged  revelations  of  God  to  man — rests 
the  whole  vast  structure  of  Christian  thought  and  ex- 
perience with  regard  to  the  miraculous.  First,  the 
possibility  of  miracle,  and  then  its  necessity,  as  a  proof 
of  divine  revelation. 


32  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

The  definition  of  miracle  has  already  been  implied  in 
the  statement  just  made.  Miracle  is  the  interruption 
of  the  ordinary  process  by  which  the  universe  of  nature 
and  of  man  is  governed.  Such  interruption  occurs 
through  the  beneficent  will  of  God  at  such  crises  in 
human  affairs  as  may  seem  to  him  best  suited  to  im- 
press upon  men  some  needed  lesson  of  faith  or  morals. 
That,  and  no  other,  is  the  definition  of  miracle  which 
makes  any  reasonable  discussion  of  it  possible.  It  is 
the  definition  upon  which  the  Church  has  always  acted. 
By  it  the  whole  notion  of  the  miraculous  must  stand  or 
fall.  It  is  true  that  from  the  beginning  of  the  influence 
of  modern  philosophy  upon  religious  thought  innumer- 
able attempts  have  been  made  to  modify  this  definition, 
so  as  to  bring  it  into  harmony  with  the  general  tenden- 
cies of  the  modern  '^ scientific"  world.  It  is  a  Httle 
remarkable  that  the  clearest  and  most  positive  declara- 
tion against  both  aspects  of  the  miraculous  should  have 
come  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  discussion.  Spinoza 
(d.  1677)  laid  down,  with  a  clearness  that  admitted  of 
no  misunderstanding,  two  counter-propositions  :  (i)  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  miracle.  (2)  If  there  were,  it  would 
prove  nothing  as  to  the  value  of  rehgious  truths.  Natu- 
rally such  distinct  utterance  was  far  too  ''advanced" 
for  Spinoza's  day,  and  in  the  reaction  against  it  various 
halfway   devices   were   resorted    to.     It   was   said,    for 


MIRACLE  33 

example,  that  the  definition  of  miracle  as  here  laid  down 
was  insufficient.  Miracle  was  not  an  interference  with 
the  law,  but  only  with  the  law  as  our  imperfect  under- 
standing of  it  shows  it  to  us.  No  sane  man  would  pre- 
tend that  we  really  know  the  laws  of  nature  and  of  Hfe 
with  any  such  thoroughness  that  we  can  be  positively 
sure  when  an  infringement  of  them  takes  place.  All 
we  know  is  that  in  this  vessel  there  is,  so  far  as  we  can 
perceive  at  this  moment,  water,  and  in  the  same  vessel 
there  is  at  the  next  moment,  so  far  as  we  can  perceive, 
and  without  the  intervention  of  any  natural  process, 
wine.  How  this  change  occurred  we  do  not  know. 
There  may  be  a  law  beyond  the  reach  of  our  human 
observation,  yet  quite  as  regular  as  any  we  can  observe, 
in  accordance  with  which  this  phenomenon  took  place. 
In  the  absence  of  all  power  to  watch  the  working  of 
such  a  law  we  are  not  justified  in  saying  it  does  not 
exist.  We  ought  therefore  to  extend  our  definition  of 
miracle  and  say:  ''Miracle  is  an  apparent  but  not  an 
actual  violation  of  natural  law,  occurring  by  a  direct 
action  of  the  divine  will  and  designed  to  convey  some 
needed  message  to  mankind." 

Another  method  was  to  assert  that  in  the  reports  of 
miracles  we  have  accounts  of  events  that  did  not  even 
involve  the  supposition  of  occult  natural  laws,  but  only 
false  explanations  of  well-known  facts  of  nature.     When, 


34  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

for  example,  we  hear  of  a  miraculous  opening  of  the  Red 
Sea  to  let  the  Israelites  go  over  dry  shod,  this  was  only 
the  report  of  a  perfectly  possible  occurrence.  Under 
certain  conditions  of  wind  and  tide,  a  ford,  known  to  the 
inhabitants  in  the  neighborhood,  might  have  become 
passable,  and  this  might  well  have  been  looked  upon  by 
the  devout  Israelites  as  a  special  act  of  divine  Provi- 
dence and  magnified  by  later  times  into  the  detailed 
narrative  of  the  Book  of  the  Exodus.  Several  conclu- 
sions might  be  drawn  from  this  method  of  approach. 
One  might  examine  carefully  all  alleged  miracles  and 
reject  all  those  which,  like  the  parting  of  the  Red  Sea, 
can  be  explained  on  the  ground  of  observable  fact. 
But  what,  then,  of  the  rest  ?  Either  they  must  be  re- 
tained as  miraculous  until  we  discover  (or  invent)  a 
^'rational"  explanation  or  they  too  must  be  rejected  on 
the  assumption  that  there  must  be  a  rational  explana- 
tion of  them,  though  for  the  present  it  eludes  our  in- 
quiry. In  either  case  it  is  obvious  that  this  so-called 
rationalizing  process  in  reality  does  away  with  the  idea 
of  the  miraculous  without  putting  in  place  of  it  any 
sound  and  consistent  doctrine  of  the  divine  method  in 
dealing  with  man.  It  has  done  its  share  in  making 
people  accustomed  to  the  idea  of  criticism  of  all  miracu- 
lous narrations;  but  as  a  systematic  method  of  ap- 
proach to  the  real  question  of  the  possibility  and  the 


MIRACLE  35 

value  of  miracle  it  is  one  of  the  least  fruitful  that  can 
be  imagined.  In  so  far  as  it  is  a  critical  method  at  all 
it  is  a  criticism  of  the  reports  of  miracle,  not  of  the  fact 
of  miracle  itself.  The  implication  is  that  a  better  re- 
porter might  have  given  us  a  higher  degree  of  confidence 
in  the  reality  of  the  thing  reported.  That  is  an  obvious 
evasion  of  the  point  really  at  issue. 

Again,  it  has  been  said  that  the  true  way  to  reach 
satisfaction  on  this  whole  matter  is  to  distinguish  with 
the  utmost  care  between  what  may  be  regarded  as  good 
miracles  on  the  one  hand  and  bad  miracles  on  the  other. 
Good  miracles  are  such  as  are  properly  attested  by 
credible  witnesses,  are  performed  without  special  ap- 
paratus of  any  kind,  and  are  plainly  designed  for  some 
lofty  spiritual  purpose.  Bad  miracles  are  such  as  lack 
sufficient  human  evidence,  involve  a  ''  professional  " 
equipment,  or  are  performed  with  an  unworthy  or  trifling 
object.  It  becomes,  therefore,  the  obvious  duty  of 
every  one  to  convince  himself  upon  these  points.  In 
every  case  of  an  alleged  miracle,  we  are  bound  first  to 
examine  the  evidence  as  to  the  occurrence  of  something 
apparently  out  of  the  common  course  of  human  experi- 
ence. Then  we  must  inquire  whether  this  occurrence 
was  perhaps  produced  by  any  of  the  familiar  devices  of 
magic,  or  by  whatever  other  name  we  may  choose  to 
call  the  professional  occultism  which  has  played  its  part 


36  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

in  the  development  of  all  peoples.  And  then  we  must 
convince  ourselves  that  the  purpose  for  which  the  al- 
leged miracle  was  performed  was  one  worthy  of  the 
special  activity  of  the  divine  will. 

It  is  obvious  that  in  following  out  these  processes  of 
inquiry  men  have  taken  a  step  toward  a  truly  rational 
comprehension  of  the  whole  subject.  Their  object  has 
generally  been  to  reduce  as  far  as  possible  the  number 
of  authentic  miracles.  The  inspiring  motive  of  such 
critical  study  has  been  to  save,  if  possible,  the  few  miracles 
of  the  New  Testament  from  the  destruction  that  seemed 
inevitable  if  they  were  to  be  put  in  the  same  category 
with  all  the  other  alleged  miraculous  occurrences  of  all 
peoples  and  of  all  times.  So  far  this  kind  of  effort  is 
worthy  of  all  praise.  Even  to  reduce  the  scope  of  the 
miracle-loving  instinct  of  mankind  is  a  service  to  the 
cause  of  a  reasonable  faith.  But  it  is  obvious  also  that 
when  all  possible  criticism  has  been  applied  along  these 
lines,  the  fact  of  miracle  in  itself  still  remains  unques- 
tioned and  we  are  no  nearer  a  real  solution  of  the  prob- 
lem than  before.  It  must  be  noticed  also  that  in  carry- 
ing out  the  requirements  of  this  analytical  method  we 
are  continually  applying  human  standards  to  a  matter 
which  is  by  its  very  definition  beyond  the  reach  of  hu- 
man powers.  We  ask  for  credible  human  witness  to  a 
process  which  no  human  eye  can  follow  and  no  human 


MIRACLE  37 

mind  can  grasp.  We  try  to  draw  a  line  between  profes- 
sional cleverness  and  ''inspired"  commission,  when  such 
a  Kne,  if  drawn  at  all,  must  be  drawn  by  a  power  greater 
than  any  that  is  at  our  disposal.  We  are  expected  to 
distinguish  between  worthy  and  trifling  purposes  —  as 
if  we  held  the  clue  to  the  plan  of  God  in  dealing  with 
the  universe.  And  after  all  these  impossible  demands 
have  been  met,  there  still  remains  the  voluminous  record 
of  duly  attested  miracles  as  far  removed  as  ever  from 
our  capacity  to  understand  or  to  profit  by  them. 

Then,  once  more,  there  is  the  figurative  method  of 
dealing  with  miracle.  Men  have  pleased  themselves 
with  saying :  The  real  marvel  of  the  universe  is  not  to 
be  found  in  interruptions  of  law  and  order,  but  in  the 
law  and  order  itself.  In  the  stately  march  of  the 
worlds  about  us  and  their  suggestion  of  greater  worlds 
beyond,  in  the  orderly  succession  of  the  seasons,  in  the 
blessed  change  of  day  and  night,  in  the  silent  processes 
of  seed-time  and  harvest,  in  the  shaping  of  man  to 
his  birth,  in  the  slow  unfolding  of  his  powers  and  in 
the  wonder  of  his  accomplishment  —  here,  we  are  told, 
is  the  true  miracle.  Not  until  we  can  explain  how  the 
seed  becomes  the  tree  have  we  any  occasion  to  trouble 
ourselves  with  the  little  puzzles  about  water  being 
made  wine  and  sick  men  being  healed  and  dead  men 
being  brought  back  to  life.     If  men  must  be  encouraged 


38  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

to  develop  their  instinct  for  the  marvellous,  let  them 
dwell  upon  the  really  marvellous  things,  not  upon  the 
fantastic  inventions  of  priests  and  madmen.  It  is  clear 
that  when  men  have  gone  as  far  as  this  in  trying  to 
make  the  word  ^'miracle"  acceptable  to  a  doubting 
world,  there  is  not  much  left  of  the  idea  with  which 
they  started.  A  figurative  miracle  is  no  miracle  at  all. 
It  is  only  the  regular  process  of  universal  harmony 
presented  in  its  most  striking  aspects.  It  has  nothing 
in  common  with  a  miracle  in  the  true  definition  of  the 
word  except  its  appeal  to  the  dramatic  instinct  of  man- 
kind. The  two  are  as  far  removed  from  each  other  as 
a  serious  drama  of  real  Hfe  and  the  wildest  melodrama. 
Nothing  remains  but  the  word. 

We  are  thus  led  by  several  stages  to  the  Unitarian 
thought  of  the  miraculous.  Here,  as  everywhere  else, 
the  Unitarian  is  possessed  by  the  ideas  of  law,  order,  and 
harmony.  He  refuses  to  follow  any  of  the  processes 
we  have  just  outlined,  in  order  to  save  a  word  which  is 
to  him  full  of  the  most  dangerous  suggestions.  His 
reasons  for  this  attitude  are  somewhat  as  follows.  In 
the  first  place,  to  his  mind  all  miracles  must  stand  or 
fall  together.  There  can  be  no  such  thing  as  great 
miracles  and  small,  good  miracles  and  bad,  whole 
miracles  and  partial  ones,  true  miracles  and  false.  He 
has  no  more  interest  in  the  miracles  of  the  New  Testa- 


MIRACLE  39 

merit  than  in  those  of  the  Old  or  in  those  of  all  the 
period  since  until  the  present  moment  —  not  to  men- 
tion those  by  which  all  the  non- Christian  religions  of 
the  past  and  the  present  have  maintained  and  still 
maintain  their  hold  upon  the  ignorance  and  credulity 
of  their  followers,  He  recognizes,  of  course,  an  infinite 
variety  in  the  details  of  presentation,  from  the  simple 
narratives  of  wonder-working  in  the  New  Testament 
and  elsewhere  to  the  gross  brutalities  of  savage  fetich- 
ism.  He  is  quite  able  to  discern  all  grades  of  motive, 
from  the  lofty  patriotic  purpose  of  ancient  Hebrew 
miracle  and  the  noble  moral  aim  of  the  New  Testament 
to  the  vulgar  greed  of  the  mediaeval  priesthood  and  the 
wild  personal  solicitations  of  primitive  passion  in  less 
developed  cults.  He  sees  all  this  and  gives  to  it  its 
due  weight;  but  he  will  not  allow  himself  to  be  led 
by  these  details  away  from  the  one  all-important  fact, 
that,  no  matter  under  what  disguises,  the  miraculous 
element  remains  always  and  everywhere  the  same.  If 
divine  power  is  to  be  thought  of  as  working  by  spas- 
modic and  arbitrary  interruptions  of  natural  law  at  all, 
such  interruptions  must  be  possible  at  any  place,  at  any 
time,  and  among  any  people.  His  concern  is,  therefore, 
with  the  principle  of  the  miraculous  and  with  this  alone. 
If  he  could  admit  the  possibility  of  miracle  at  all,  he 
would  be  ready  to  admit  it  everywhere. 


40  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

Unitarians,  then,  meet  the  whole  proposition  of  the 
miraculous  with  a  general  denial.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  miracle.  They  reject  all  the  methods  we  have 
enumerated  for  making  the  notion  of  miracle  accept- 
able to  the  rational  mind-  On  many  points  of  theology 
shades  and  compromises  may  be  pardoned;  on  this  never. 
They  will  not  be  misled  by  any  subtleties  of  speculation 
or  of  logic  into  any  halfway  settlement  of  this  problem. 
They  recur  once  again  to  their  fixed  starting-point  of 
the  unity  of  the  plan  by  which  the  universe,  includ- 
ing man,  is  governed,  and  they  reject  miracle  because  it 
seems  to  them  to  be  the  negation  of  this  great  positive 
truth.  They  go  back  to  their  fundamental  notion  of 
man's  native  capacity  to  receive  the  highest  spiritual 
truths,  and  reject  miracle  because  it  seems  to  them  to 
be  absolutely  at  variance  with  the  existence  of  that 
capacity.  If  men  cannot  comprehend  spiritual  things 
unless  they  are  enforced  by  the  startling  accompaniments 
of  violated  law,  then  men  are  very  different  from  what 
the  Unitarian  beheves  them  to  be. 

It  is  easy,  of  course,  to  find  attractive  analogies  in 
support  of  the  belief  in  miracle.  Children,  it  is  said, 
must  be  led  into  the  ways  of  duty  by  appealing  to  their 
sense  of  wonder.  Dramatic  episodes  will  do  for  them 
what  no  amount  of  insistence  upon  law  would  ever 
accomplish.     Criminals  may  be  influenced  by  persuad- 


MIRACLE  41 

ing  them  of  the  terrors  that  await  the  evil-doer.  They 
know  the  law  well  enough,  but  its  very  sameness  and 
rigidity  repel  them,  while  the  dread  of  something  in- 
calculable and  mysterious  appeals  to  them  with  all  the 
attraction  of  a  game  of  chance.  The  idle  and  indifferent 
may  be  waked  out  of  their  physical  or  mental  sloth  by 
a  sense  of  some  peculiar  and  specific  consequence  better 
than  by  any  insistence  upon  unvarying  law.  And  if 
these  things  are  so  in  the  dealing  of  human  authority 
with  those  for  whom  it  is  responsible,  shall  we  not  sup- 
pose that  the  divine  governance  of  the  universe  will  take 
a  similar  attitude  toward  the  sinful  world  of  men? 

That  is  pretty,  but  it  is  not  relevant.  The  Unitarian  re- 
fuses to  believe  that  the  divine  method  is  adjusted  to  the 
needs  of  the  lame  and  the  lazy  among  men.  Rather,  he 
believes  that,  like  the  wisest  human  pedagogy,  the  divine 
teaching  comes  to  us  most  forcibly  and  most  permanently 
when  it  appeals  to  the  highest  in  us  and  leaves  the  low- 
est to  correct  itself.  He  remembers  the  word  of  the  great 
Teacher  that  it  is  a  wicked  and  adulterous  generation  that 
seeks  after  signs.  He  feels  that  if  there  was  anything  in 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  clearer  than  all  else,  it  was  this  con- 
stant appeal  to  the  highest  and  the  refusal  to  rely  upon 
the  sense  of  the  marvellous  to  impress  his  hearers.  That 
Jesus  beheved,  as  every  one  in  his  day  and  from  his 
day  until  recent  times  beheved,   in   the  possibihty  of 


42  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

miracle  there  can  be  no  doubt.  He  probably  believed, 
if  he  thought  of  it  at  all,  that  the  earth  was  fiat  and 
that  the  sun  moved  about  it;  but  we  do  not  on  that 
account  accept  these  discarded  notions  of  natural  phe- 
nomena. He  believed  in  miracle;  but  in  this  matter 
as  in  others  he  rose  above  the  vulgar  conceptions  of 
his  day  and  of  many  succeeding  days.  He  did  not  base 
his  appeal  to  men  upon  the  performance  of  miraculous 
works.  It  is  altogether  probable  that  he  believed  him- 
self gifted  with  supernatural  powers.  Like  all  great 
leaders  of  men,  he  had  his  contradictory  sides.  He 
utilized  the  material  he  found  to  his  hand  and  sought 
to  impress  his  spiritual  mission  upon  his  community  in 
ways  that  would  be  acceptable  to  it.  The  Unitarian 
can  no  more  accept  the  so-called  miracles  of  Jesus  than 
he  can  those  of  other  alleged  wonder-workers;  but  he 
is  quite  ready  to  believe  that  Jesus  was  gifted  with  the 
power  of  making  a  credulous  people  believe  that  he  was 
in  a  highly  specific  sense  the  direct  agent  of  God.  It 
requires,  alas  !  but  little  real  spiritual  endowment  to 
do  that,  as  the  history  of  human  credulity  abundantly 
proves,  and  that  is  one  of  the  strongest  reasons  why  the 
Unitarian,  devoted  follower  of  Jesus  that  he  is,  declines 
to  lay  any  emphasis  upon  this  side  of  his  activity.  It 
seems  to  him  not  a  service  of  honor  but  rather  of  dis- 
honor to  claim  authority  for  the  word  of  Jesus  on  the 


MIRACLE  43 

basis  of  so  cheap  and  vulgar  an  appeal  as  this.  What 
rational  connection  of  ideas  is  there,  he  asks  himself, 
between  the  sublime  spiritual  conceptions  of  the  Sermon 
on  the  Mount  and  the  multiplication  of  a  loaf  of  bread 
by  one  hundred  ?  —  or  between  the  imperative  social 
doctrine  of  the  sanctity  of  marriage  and  the  turning  of 
a  jar  of  water  into  a  jar  of  wine  ?  —  or  between  the  su- 
preme declaration  *'God  is  spirit"  and  the  power  to 
discern  that  the  woman  by  the  well  had  had  five  hus- 
bands? ''There  is  no  connection,"  the  Unitarian  an- 
swers. The  truth  of  these  great  spiritual  and  moral 
proclamations  is  attested  by  the  response  they  meet  in 
the  hearts  of  men  who  are  capable  of  receiving  them 
and  of  interpreting  them  to  their  fellows.  It  makes  not 
the  slightest  difference  whether  they  are  accompanied 
by  dramatic  appeals  to  the  lower  instinct  of  wonder  or 
not.  If  they  are  true  in  themselves  they  are  true  —  if 
not,  no  marvels  can  make  them  so. 

To  the  Unitarian  it  seems  a  degradation  of  all  that 
is  highest  and  best  in  Christianity  to  confuse  it  with 
this  other  world  of  occult  manifestation.  Indeed,  the 
Church  itself  has  always  felt  this  danger  and  has  tried 
from  time  to  time  to  set  limits  to  the  working  of  the 
miraculous,  as  it  has  tried  in  every  way  to  limit  the 
operation  of  forces  dangerous  to  its  control.  It  has 
sought  to  define  the  conditions  of  miracle,  while  utiliz- 


44  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

ing  the  principle  of  it  to  the  fullest  extent.  For  example, 
the  Church  has  combated  from  the  start  what  it  de- 
scribes as  ''magic,"  i.e.  the  summoning  of  occult  forces 
to  aid  human  action  in  unworthy  ways.  The  Unitarian 
sees,  however,  in  magic  only  another  side  of  miracle  — 
or,  to  put  it  the  other  way,  he  sees  in  miracle  only 
magic  applied  by  worthy  people  to  seemingly  worthy 
ends.  There  is  a  very  good  analogy  here  in  the  com- 
parison one  is  compelled  to  make  in  these  days  between 
the  alleged  "absent  treatment"  of  disease  by  specially 
gifted  persons  and  the  manifestations  of  witchcraft.  In 
the  one  case  a  person  is  affected  by  another  person  to 
his  advantage;  in  the  other  case  to  his  injury.  It  re- 
quires little  thought  to  see  that  the  delusions  of  the 
one  process  are  in  no  essential  respect  different  from 
those  of  the  other.  In  each  case  there  is  a  certain 
slight  foundation  of  psychological  fact,  just  enough 
upon  which  to  build  up  a  fictitious  system  of  beliefs 
and  usages  harmful  alike  to  those  who  practise  them 
and  those  who  are  practised  upon.  So,  and  not  other- 
wise, is  it  with  the  distinction  between  miracle  and 
magic.  In  the  one  case  there  is  an  alleged  compact  of 
humanity  with  powers  of  darkness  to  do  the  works  of 
darkness,  to  bring  diseases  upon  people,  to  rouse  the 
passions  of  love  or  of  revenge,  to  influence  the  course  of 
justice,  to  bring  success  in  business  at  another's  cost. 


MIRACLE  45 

In  the  other  case  there  is  an  alleged  special  relation 
between  certain  men  and  God,  whereby  they  are  made 
mediums  of  the  divine  will  to  accomplish  good  results^ 
to  certify  to  the  truth  of  doctrines,  to  carry  conviction 
of  sin,  to  reconcile  enemies,  to  heal  disease.  In  both 
cases  there  is  a  certain  shght  psychological  basis.  The 
belief  in  the  magical  and  in  the  miraculous  does  produce 
some  results,  just  as  undoubtedly  the  belief  in  the  in- 
fluence of  the  changing  moon  upon  the  state  of  the 
weather  produces,  in  the  minds  of  those  who  have  it, 
results  absolutely  independent  of  the  truth  or  falsehood 
of  the  belief  itself.  The  belief  of  the  ignorant  hospital 
patient  in  the  immediate  efficacy  of  the  cKnical  ther- 
mometer is  as  certainly  an  influence  for  good  as  the 
therapeutic  value  of  the  process  itself  is  certainly  nil. 
We  have  constantly  to  distinguish  between  the  belief 
in  a  thing  and  the  reality  of  the  thing  itself. 

The  Church  has  done  well  to  restrict  as  far  as  possible 
the  formal  limits  within  which  this  belief  in  special  inter- 
positions of  the  divine  will  in  human  affairs  might  safely 
move.  It  was  worth  while  to  diminish  to  the  utmost 
the  abuse  of  human  credulity  which  was  the  stock  in 
trade  of  all  the  professors  of  magic.  But  what  the  Uni- 
tarian insists  upon  is  that  the  Church  has  always  been 
actuated  by  the  desire  to  control  a  monopoly  in  supply- 
ing an  alleged  demand  of  frail  humanity  rather  than  by 


46  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

a  single  purpose  to  know  and  to  teach  what  is  true. 
Men  demand  some  form  of  satisfaction  for  the  craving 
after  the  marvellous,  and  the  Church  will  undertake 
to  meet  this  with  a  supply  suited  to  the  best  interests 
of  mankind.  What  a  world  this  would  be,  if  we  were 
to  believe  nothing  we  cannot  see,  love  nothing  we  can- 
not touch,  fear  nothing  we  cannot  feel !  Since  there  is 
so  much  we  cannot  understand,  why  not  accept  the 
pleasant  tales  the  Church  has  preserved  for  us,  in  the 
spirit  of  children  listening  to  fairy  tales  by  the  eerie 
light  of  the  evening  fire  —  half  believing,  half  doubting, 
knowing  they  are  venturing  into  a  world  of  uncanny 
dreads  and  fictions,  yet  feeling  the  subtle  relation  of 
these  to  everyday  experience? 

The  Unitarian  feels  the  charm  of  all  this.  If  he  did 
not  he  would  not  be  able  to  understand  so  'clearly 
why  he  must  guard  himself  against  it.  If  it  were  true 
that  the  Church  has  regarded  the  miraculous  element 
merely  as  the  poetic  decoration  of  rehgious  faith,  —  a 
something  akin  to  fairy  tale  or  natural  legend,  —  it  would 
not  be  worth  his  while  to  trouble  himself  about  the  matter 
at  all.  The  Church,  from  the  beginning  until  now,  bases 
its  claim  to  the  allegiance  of  men  upon  the  sanction  of 
miracles.  Reduce  the  volume  of  the  miraculous  as  it 
may,  define  and  redefine  as  it  will  the  limits  within 
which  it  may  work,  the  fact  remains  that  no  important 


MIRACLE  47 

member  of  the  Christian  Church  to-day  could  venture  to 
banish  the  miraculous  from  its  creeds.  The  Church  be- 
gins the  history  of  its  founder  with  the  miracle  of  a  vir- 
gin birth  and  ends  it  with  the  miracle  of  a  physical 
resurrection  from  the  dead.  Some  of  its  members  would 
keep  these  and  reject  all  others ;  but  the  immense  majority 
cling  to  the  miracles  of  the  New  Testament  and  stop  there 
—  as  if  divine  power  were,  so  to  speak,  exhausted  by  the 
effort  of  starting  a  new  religion  !  Others  again,  with 
more  consistency,  hold  fast  to  the  immense  volume 
of  mediaeval  and  modern  miracle  —  fitting  it  in  some- 
how with  cheerful  ingenuity  into  the  requirements  of  the 
modern  ''scientific"  world  and  undismayed  by  all  revela- 
tions of  fraud  or  error. 

With  these  last  the  Unitarian  feels  a  certain  sympathy. 
If  he  aims  to  be  consistent  in  essentials,  so  do  they.  He 
tries  to  be  true  to  the  principle  of  authority  which  he 
finds  within  himself  —  to  that  ''enlightened  conscience'' 
we  have  sought  elsewhere  to  define.  They  are  true  to 
the  principle  of  authority  which  they  find  in  an  institu- 
tion guaranteed  by  its  own  assertions  of  a  divine  com- 
mission as  a  bank  might  guarantee  its  deposits  by  its 
own  notes  of  hand.  If  he  were  not  a  Unitarian  he 
would  certainly  join  with  those  of  his  fellow-Christians 
who  know  best  what  they  believe  and  are  best  able  to 
give  account  of  it.     He  is  a  Unitarian  largely  because 


48  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

he  cannot  enter  at  all  into  that  world  of  occultism  in 
which  they,  more  than  any  other  Christians,  live  and 
have  their  intellectual  being.  It  would  all  seem  to  him 
grotesque  were  it  not  inwrought  with  ideas  so  infinitely 
serious.  The  teaching  of  the  Church  is  that  unless  these 
miracles  are  true,  the  world  of  mankind  is  lost.  With- 
out the  miracle  of  the  virgin  birth  there  could  be  no 
reconciliation  between  God  and  man  such  as  is  needed 
to  save  man  from  perpetual  opposition  to  the  will  of 
God.  Without  the  miracle  of  the  resurrection  of  the 
man  Jesus  we  could  have  no  assurance  as  to  the  con- 
tinuance of  our  individual  existence  beyond  this  earthly 
life.  Without  the  constantly  repeated  miracle  of  the 
Mass  the  soul  of  man  could  not  be  kept  in  its  right 
relation  to  the  infinite  source  of  all  spiritual  certainty. 
The  Roman  Catholic  declares  these  things  with  clear- 
ness and  consistency.  The  orthodox  Protestant  coquets 
with  them  in  every  conceivable  variation  of  confusion 
and  half-meaning.  The  Unitarian  clears  himself  of  the 
whole  entanglement  by  the  one  single,  confident  dec- 
laration:  ''There  is  no  miracle,  because  the  God  in 
whom  I  believe  needs  no  such  devices  as  this  to  make 
himself  a  place  in  the  heart  of  man."  It  is  inconceiv- 
able to  him  that  any  such  dramatic  demonstrations 
should  add  one  particle  to  the  force  of  that  inner  con- 
sciousness which  is  to  him  the  sole  and  sufficient  vnt- 


MIRACLE  49 

ness  to  the  divine  governance  of  the  universe  in  which 
he  is  a  part. 

The  Unitarian  does  not  trouble  himself  to  examine 
into  the  credibility  of  the  evidence  for  alleged  miracu- 
lous events.  To  him  the  very  notion  of  human  evi- 
dence for  a  divine  manifestation  is  preposterous.  How 
can  I,  a  mere  human  being,  judge  whether  a  given 
phenomenon  is  really  miraculous  or  not?  Certainly 
the  witness  of  other  human  beings,  all  as  incapable  as 
myself,  can  be  worth  nothing  to  me.  Though  a  thou- 
sand persons  should  declare  that  they  had  seen  a  miracle, 
this  would  mean  nothing,  except  that  they  had  seen 
something  they  could  not  account  for.  That  is  an  ex- 
perience we  all  have,  but  we  do  not  on  that  account 
call  such  experiences  miraculous.  We  accept  human 
testimony  on  matters  about  which  human  evidence  is 
possible,  and  on  these  only.  When  we  pass  beyond 
these  we  enter  into  a  region  where  we  have  no  sanction 
except  faith  alone.  Now  the  Unitarian  believes  that 
faith  concerns  itself  with  spiritual  matters,  whereas 
miracle  has  to  do  with  physical  phenomena,  and  physical 
phenomena  can  be  proved  only  by  physical  means. 
Take,  for  example,  the  chief  miracles  of  the  Church 
tradition,  the  virgin  birth  and  the  resurrection  of  the 
body.  These  are  physical  facts  or  they  are  nothing. 
We  may  spiritualize  them  as  we  like,  but  the  value  of 


50  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

all  this  spiritualizing  process  rests  upon  the  physical 
fact.  If  there  was  no  virgin  birth  in  fact,  then  all  the 
superstructure  of  theology  and  philosophy  built  upon  it 
falls  to  pieces.  It  would  be  idle  to  evolve  an  abstract 
theory  of  the  necessity  of  an  individual  incarnation  of 
deity  through  a  virgin  birth  unless  there  were  an  actual 
historical  fact  to  correspond  to  this.  To  that  physical 
fact,  therefore,  we  need  human  testimony,  and  such 
testimony  is  entirely  lacking.  To  the  fact  of  a  virgin 
birth  there  can  be  but  one  credible  witness,  and,  so  far 
as  we  know,  that  witness  was  silent.  But,  supposing 
we  were  convinced  in  the  only  possible  way  that  the 
laws  of  nature  had  been  so  far  violated  that  new  life 
had  appeared  upon  the  earth  without  the  mediation  of 
a  life  germ,  what  then  ?  There  would  stand  the  fact, 
but  what  of  it?  Its  very  exceptional  character  would 
alone  deprive  it  of  all  meaning,  for  phenomena  have 
meaning  to  us  only  as  they  are  related  to  other  phe- 
nomena. The  being  so  produced  would  have  no  claim 
upon  our  attention  except  as  a  curiosity  of  nature. 
The  Church  has  seen  fit  to  ascribe  to  this  alleged  virgin 
birth  the  character  of  ''sinlessness,"  but  here  again  is  a 
confusion  of  the  physical  and  the  spiritual.  ^'Sin"  is  a 
spiritual  thing;  a  human  birth  is  a  physical  thing.  What 
have  they  to  do  with  each  other?  ''Because  this  man 
came  into  the  world  by  means  of  a  virgin  birth,  there- 


MIRACLE 


51 


fore  he  was  without  sin, "  says  the  Church.  The  ortho- 
dox Protestant  sects  have  done  their  best  to  make  this 
declaration  mean  something  different  from  what  it  was 
intended  to  mean.  The  Unitarian  rejects  it  absolutely, 
because,  using  words  in  their  natural  meanings,  he  finds 
himself  led  into  a  tissue  of  absurdities  whenever  he 
applies  rational  tests  to  it.  The  Church  has  found  a 
use  for  this  miracle  in  emphasizing  its  doctrine  of  the 
essentially  sinful  nature  of  man  as  a  being  partly  ma- 
terial. Unitarians,  believing  that  the  idea  of  sin  has  no 
connection  whatever  with  the  fact  of  man's  material 
nature,  but  only  with  the  use  he  makes  of  it  in  the 
moral  and  spiritual  struggle  of  life,  find  no  sense  at  all 
in  the  notion  of  a  human  being  produced,  as  the  Church 
puts  it,  "without  sin." 

Similar  reflections,  only  in  a  somewhat  reversed  order, 
apply  to  the  thought  of  Unitarians  about  the  alleged 
miracle  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus.  Singular  that 
Christian  theology,  which  showed  such  contempt  for 
the  material  side  of  man,  could  not  get  away  from  the 
idea  of  the  preciousness  of  the  body,  after  all.  One 
might  have  supposed  that  when  the  martyr-death  of 
the  Master  had  been  accomplished  nothing  could  have 
been  more  welcome  to  the  feeling  of  his  followers  than 
the  thought  that  now  he  was  freed  from  the  trammels 
of  the  impeding  flesh  and  become  pure  spirit,  free  for- 


52  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

ever  to  enter  into  communion  with  the  spirits  of  those 
who  loved  him  and  mourned  for  him.  But  no  !  one 
more  demonstration  of  his  really  human  nature  was 
needed.  The  body  that  had  been  to  them  the  visible 
symbol  of  the  radiant  soul  within  must  be  brought 
back  in  full  living  energy  once  more.  It  could  not  be 
that  this  material  shell  should  suffer  the  fate  of  com- 
mon clay,  returning  into  the  universe  of  matter  from 
which  it  had  sprung  —  for  it  must  be  remembered,  and 
we  shall  have  occasion  to  remind  ourselves,  that  the 
Church  maintains  the  actuality  of  the  human  in  Christ. 
This  body  must  be  otherwise  removed  from  the  ways 
of  men;  and  so  it  ''ascended,"  that  is,  it  entered  into 
the  world  of  spirit,  where  God  lives  forever.  The  Church, 
with  its  easy  powers  of  reconciling  the  obviously  ir- 
reconcilable, has  kept  this  tangle  of  ideas  alive  by  every 
device  of  doctrine  and  of  ritual.  Protestant  orthodoxy 
has  rationalized  upon  it  or  refused  to  think  about  it  at 
all.  Unitarianism  faces  the  matter  frankly.  It  denies 
the  physical  fact  of  the  resurrection  because  it  is  a  fact 
as  to  which  no  human  evidence  is  possible.  It  would 
be  possible  to  demonstrate  by  human  evidence  —  evi- 
dence, however,  needing  rather  careful  corroboration  — 
that  a  human  organism  had  ceased  to  live.  It  would 
be  possible  also  to  demonstrate  by  easier  evidence  that 
it  was  alive.     But  to  prove  that  life  had  entered  into 


MIRACLE 


53 


lifeless  material  is  as  impossible  as  it  is  for  human 
powers  to  grasp  the  principle  of  life  itself.  The  Uni- 
tarian could  believe  anything  more  easily  than  he  could 
that  the  detail  of  evidence  in  any  case  was  sufficiently 
accurate  to  establish  this  violation  of  all  human  ex- 
perience. 

But  again  supposing  the  impossible  —  that  divine 
power  should  so  far  have  violated  its  own  law  as  to  bring 
this  dead  man  back  into  Hfe,  —  what  then  ?  Well, 
—  a  dead  man  would  have  come  to  life,  a  thing  that 
had  never  happened  before  and  has  never  happened 
since ;  what  of  it  ?  Again  we  have  to  say  that  the  very 
exceptional  character  of  the  phenomenon  deprives  it  of 
all  value.  It  has  no  relation  to  anything  that  concerns 
us.  We  are  not  going  to  be  brought  back  from  physical 
death  into  physical  life.  Theology  in  its  wildest  mo- 
ments has  never  reached  a  definition  of  bodily  resurrec- 
tion that  need  greatly  alarm  us.  It  cherishes  the 
phrase,  but  the  alleged  fact  has  never,  except  in  the  ex- 
travagant visions  of  "  millenianism,"  played  any  im- 
portant part.  The  most  that  has  been  done  is  to  make 
the  physical  resurrection  of  Jesus  the  promise  of  an  ulti- 
mate spiritual  awakening  in  some  undefined  stage  of  be- 
ing towards  which  our  present  life,  properly  conducted 
under  the  guidance  of  an  authorized  Church,  is  directing 
us.     We  touch  here  upon  the  baffiing  doctrine  of  a  future 


54  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

life,  a  subject  we  must  reserve  for  another  chapter.  Our 
purpose  here  is  only  to  show  the  attitude  of  Unitari- 
ans toward  the  miraculous,  first  in  itself  and  then  as  a 
means  of  certifying  to  reHgious  truth.  So  far  as  the 
story  of  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  is  concerned.  Uni- 
tarians may  feel  the  charm  of  the  narrative,  its  touch- 
ing appeal  to  the  sentiment  of  personal  affection,  its 
altogether  human  clinging  to  the  Hfe  that  now  is.  They 
reject  the  story,  however,  not  only  on  the  grounds  we 
have  been  enumerating,  but  also  because  they  feel  it 
an  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  highest  comprehension  of 
the  message  of  Jesus.  The  spiritual  life  he  taught  was 
not  a  thing  of  another  world.  It  was  the  life  of  the 
spirit  shared  by  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world 
—  not  every  man  that  goes  out  of  the  world.  The 
Kingdom  of  God  he  sought  to  establish  was  the  reign 
of  righteousness  in  the  lives  of  men  here  and  now.  The 
resurrection  he  cared  about  was  the  deliverance  of  the 
soul  of  man  from  the  slavery  of  sin  into  the  freedom  of 
the  law  of  righteousness.  The  ascension  that  he  prom- 
ised was  no  stage-exit  into  an  impossible  heaven,  but 
the  rising  of  the  individual  soul  into  harmony  with  the 
inevitable  order  that  is  the  soul  of  the  universe  of  God- 
The  wicked  and  adulterous  generations  still  go  on  seek- 
ing after  signs  and  wonders ;  but  the  mind  that  can  see 
clearly,  the  heart  that  can  feel  warmly,  the  soul  that 


MIRACLE  55 

responds  promptly  to  all  the  influences  of  the  Spirit, 
needs  no  appeal  to  the  wonder- seeking  impulse.  Rather 
it  feels  itself  dragged  down  to  a  lower  level  of  appre- 
hension, cheapened  and  degraded  by  the  confusions  and 
evasions  of  those  who  profess  to  be  the  spiritual  guides 
of  men. 

Let  it  not,  however,  be  supposed  that  Unitarians  are 
blind  and  deaf  to  the  value  of  the  sense  of  wonder  in 
stimulating  religious  emotion.  They  only  insist  that 
this  feeling  shall  be  raised  by  things  worthy  and  not  by 
things  unworthy.  It  seems  to  them  pitiable  that  people 
should  be  asked  to  spend  their  wonder  upon  the  ab- 
normal when  the  normal  and  regular  is  so  vastly  worthier 
of  their  regard.  They  cannot  be  impressed  by  the 
monstrous  fiction  of  a  virgin  birth  while  the  sacred 
mystery  of  motherhood  surrounds  every  new  life  that 
comes  here  on  earth  to  bear  witness  to  the  perpetually 
renewed  union  of  human  love  with  human  duty.  It 
seems  to  them  far  nobler  to  take  these  common  things 
and  set  them  in  the  light  of  a  continuous  revelation  of 
God  to  man  than  to  thrust  them  out  of  sight  and  put 
in  their  place  some  imaginary  marvel  that  will  not 
bear  a  moment's  rational  thought  and  stands  in  no  vital 
relation  to  any  experience  of  humanity. 

Why  should  they  be  impressed  with  the  tale  of  a 
resurrection  of   the  body?     Unitarians,   like  all  other 


56  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

men,  feel  the  strain  and  stress  of  earthly  life.  They  will 
not  rebel  against  it.  They  accept  the  struggle  of  the 
body  and  the  spirit  as  a  part  of  that  law  of  conflict 
whereby  this  Ufe  moves  on;  but  they  accept  also  with 
still  greater  readiness  the  thought  of  death  as  the  normal 
and  happy  end  of  Hfe  on  earth.  They  see  in  the  ex- 
perience of  men  how  death  works  its  marvels  in  human 
hearts  equally  with  birth.  They  see  how  it  has  in- 
spired the  highest  poetry,  has  stimulated  the  noblest 
ambition  to  take  up  bravely  the  work  our  dear  ones 
have  laid  down,  how  it  softens  and  idealizes  the  figures 
that  Hfe  made  stern,  how  it  calls  up  tender  images  of 
rest  and  peace,  and  they  ask:  What  wonder  of  violated 
law  could  be  half  so  wonderful  as  this  silent  working 
of  the  law  we  welcome  as  divine  ? 

That  is  the  Unitarian  attitude  towards  the  two  most 
imposing  among  the  miraculous  traditions  of  Chris- 
tianity. These  two  stand  apart  from  the  general  record 
of  miracle  as  the  chief  illustrations  of  wonders  brought 
about  without  the  intervention  of  human  agency.  In 
these  divine  power  is  conceived  of  as  acting  directly 
upon  the  order  of  the  physical  world,  commanding  it 
to  change  for  the  moment  its  normal  processes  in  order 
that  mankind  might  receive  the  more  willingly  some 
great  and  imperative  benefit.     If  there  were  any  form 


MIRACLE 


57 


of  the  miraculous  that  could  command  a  respectful 
attention,  it  would  certainly  be  found  here.  If,  then, 
Unitarians  cannot  accept  these,  it  is  obvious  that  they 
can  find  still  less  to  attract  them  in  the  vast  volume  of 
miraculous  record  in  which  the  wonder  is  brought 
about  through  the  intervention  of  some  human  agent. 
It  will  be  said  perhaps  that  in  our  scientific  age  it  is 
merely  fighting  with  windmills  to  insist  upon  this  matter ; 
but  it  must  be  remembered  that  an  important  branch 
of  the  Christian  Church  declares  that  its  priests  have 
power  to  perform  and  really  do  perform,  daily  and 
hourly,  as  complete  a  miracle  as  was  ever  imagined  in 
the  wildest  extravagance  of  credulity,  and  that  failure 
to  accept  and  take  part  in  this  miracle  involves  spiritual 
death  in  this  world  and  the  next.  We  cannot  forget 
that  this  historic  Church,  in  conferring  its  highest  dis- 
tinctions, makes  these  dependent  upon  a  certain  num- 
ber of  ''well-attested"  miracles  and  claims  for  itself  the 
power  of  determining  by  adequate  tests  the  validity  of 
all  alleged  miraculous  manifestations.  Nor  can  we 
overlook  the  latent  readiness  of  the  majority  of  man- 
kind, unaffected  by  all  the  scientific  method  of  our 
time,  to  grasp  at  every  straw  of  occult  appeal  that  can 
seem  to  offer  any  help  in  meeting  the  mystery  of  Hfe. 
The  credulous  state  of  mind  exists  to-day  as  it  has  al- 
ways existed.     The  only  defence  against  it  is  in  draw- 


58  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

ing  clear  and  firm  the  line  that  separates  evidence  from 
delusion,  and  that  is  what  the  Unitarian  tries  to  do. 
In  definitely  denying  the  miraculous  he  opens  the  way 
for  a  clearer  vision  of  spiritual  things  than  any  com- 
fortable acquiescence  could  ever  supply.  He  does  not 
think  of  it  as  a  loss,  but  every  way  as  a  gain. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   NATURE    OF   MAN 

Le  christianisme,  en  brisant  rhomme  en  exterieur  et  interieur, 
le  monde  en  terre  et  del,  en  enfer  et  paradis  a  decompose  I'unite 
humaine.  .  .  . 

—  Henri-Frederic  Amiel. 

Systems  of  religion  are  wont  to  begin  with  the  largest 
possible  abstractions  about  the  nature  of  God,  the  uni- 
verse and  God's  dealing  with  it,  good  and  evil  in  their 
abstract  meaning,  their  conflict  with  each  other,  and 
their  final  reconciliation  in  some  satisfactory  adjust- 
ment. Then,  when  these  large  foundations  have  been 
laid,  we  are  introduced  to  man  as  an  element  in  the 
vast  scheme  of  things.  He  is  brought  before  us  as  an 
incident  in  the  working  of  a  system  that  might  conceiv- 
ably have  existed  without  him.  We  are  shown  his 
relation  to  God  as  the  result  of  a  divine  plan.  He  is 
of  himself  essentially  antagonistic  to  God,  and  hence 
needs  reconciliation  through  mediations  of  various 
kinds,  —  through  sacrifices  of  propitiation  and  sacrifices 
of  expiation,  through  intermediate  gods  and  demigods, 
through  incarnations  of  deity  and   deifications  of  hu- 

59 


6o  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

manity,  through  priesthoods  and  churches  claiming  pos- 
session of  the  means  of  reconcilement.  In  one  way  or 
another  man  is  represented  as  involved  in  a  religious 
compact  he  has  had  no  share  in  making.  He  is  some- 
how, as  it  were,  the  victim  of  powers  that  may  work 
their  will  upon  him,  and  all  he  can  do  is  to  find  ways 
of  so  dealing  with  these  powers  as  to  save  himself  from 
wrong  or  injury. 

Christianity  has  not  escaped  from  the  entanglements 
of  such  a  method.  It  too  has  had  its  ''scheme"  of 
religion,  its  philosophies  of  God,  the  universe,  good  and 
evil,  sin  {i.e.  opposition)  and  reconciliation,  and  it  too 
has  had  to  find  a  place  for  man  in  the  midst  of  these 
greater  abstractions.  In  Christianity  as  elsewhere  man 
has  been  made  to  appear  a  victim  to  a  world  of 
powers  foreign  to  his  own  nature,  and  he  has  been  driven 
into  inventing  means  of  escape.  Harder  still,  these 
ways  of  escape,  the  means  of  reconcilement,  the  sacra- 
ments, the  priesthoods,  the  church  institutions,  have  in 
turn  been  represented  to  him  as  divine  in  their  origin 
and  their  sanctions.  Man  himself  has  almost  disap- 
peared under  the  weight  of  systems  and  institutions 
gradually  piled  upon  him,  all  claiming  a  right  over  him 
in  virtue  of  some  essentially  divine  commission.  If  at 
any  point  he  dared  to  assert  the  inherent  right  of  his 
own  manhood,   he  has  been   driven  back  by   the  re- 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  6l 

minder  of  his  own  nothingness  and  the  all-sufficing  con- 
trol of  the  divine  ^'system." 

Now  the  thought  of  Unitarians  about  religion  follows 
an  entirely  different  method.  It  does  not  deny  that 
there  may  be  a  sound  philosophy  of  the  universe  in- 
volving in  itself  a  doctrine  of  God,  of  life,  of  good  and 
evil,  and  of  man  in  his  manifold  relations  to  all  these. 
Only,  the  Unitarian  feels  that  ultimate  certainty  on 
these  matters  cannot  be  attained  by  finite  man,  and 
that,  therefore,  speculation  about  them  belongs  rather 
in  the  region  of  philosophy  than  of  religion.  His  re- 
ligious thinking  begins  with  and  centres  about  the  idea 
of  man  himself  as  an  independent,  self-determining 
being.  His  rehgion  is  a  rehgion  of  humanity,  starting 
from  human  impulses,  limited  by  human  capacities, 
working  by  human  methods,  and  expressing  itself  in 
human  ways. 

For  the  convenience  of  his  thought  the  Unitarian  has 
certain  definitions  of  man  which  serve  him  with  an 
approach  to  accuracy.  First  of  all :  man  appears  to 
him  as  a  unit.  Earlier  theologies  laid  weight  upon  the 
distinctions  obvious  in  man's  nature.  It  is,  indeed, 
impossible  to  think  at  all  on  the  subject  without  per- 
ceiving the  complexity  of  the  human  being.  He  has  a 
physical  body,  made  up  of  the  same  elements  that 
enter  into  other  forms  of  material  life.     Man's  body  is 


62  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

subject  to  the  same  laws  of  procreation,  of  growth, 
decay,  and  re-formation  that  govern  the  world  of  matter 
as  a  whole.  Further,  there  is,  in  addition  to  the  ma- 
terial, also  a  psychic  or  vital  element,  common  to  man 
with  all  organic  life,  —  the  principle  by  which  his  ma- 
terial existence  is  kept  going  and  is  carried  out  to  its 
finest  expressions.  Again,  there  is  in  man  what  we  in 
our  despair  of  language  call  the  ''soul  "  or  '  spirit,"  the 
element  in  his  nature  which  most  clearly  differentiates 
him  from  all  other  living  organisms.  By  this  he  thinks, 
with  conscious  reference  to  an  end ;  he  feels,  in  conscious 
obedience  to  emotions  of  love  or  hate,  bringing  himself 
thus  into  vital  relations  with  other  human  beings. 
By  this  also  he  wills,  and  is  thus  led  to  actions,  through 
which  his  whole  personaKty  reaches  out  and  affects  the 
world  about  him;  and,  finally,  by  this  also  he  aspires, 
hopes,  prays,  worships,  touches  at  a  thousand  points 
the  greater  Hfe  whereby  his  own  lesser  personaHty  is 
surrounded. 

This  threefold  aspect  of  man's  nature  is  obvious.  It 
might  be  even  further  refined  upon,  even  more  minutely 
subdivided,  but  for  our  present  purpose  this  is  enough. 
It  appears  under  this  form  in  most  early  Christian 
writings.  It  is  used  there  to  describe,  not  only  the 
various  elements  in  the  nature  of  the  individual  man, 
but  also  various  classes  of  mankind.     In  both  the  Gnos- 


THE  NATURE  OF   MAN  63 

tic  and  the  Montanistic  systems  there  appear  material 
{hylic)  men,  animal  {psychic)  men  and  spiritual  {pneu- 
matic) men.  This  distinction  merges  easily  into  the 
other  and  more  familiar  one  of  body,  mind  and  soul 
which  we  shall  employ  here  generally  as  simpler  and 
as  sufficiently  exact.  In  fact  Christian  theology  never 
succeeded  in  drawing  a  very  clear  line  between  the  psy- 
chic and  the  pneumatic,  the  anima  and  the  spiritus  in 
man.  What  it  was  clear  about  was,  that  these  two  ele- 
ments stood  together  over  against  the  merely  material. 
That  antagonism  it  emphasized  and  developed  in  every 
way.  Its  greatest  teacher,  Augustine,  made  the  conflict 
between  the  material  and  the  spiritual  the  central  feature 
of  his  thought,  and  in  the  great  awakening  of  Protestant- 
ism it  was  this  idea  again  that  rallied  the  forces  of  oppo- 
sition in  the  most  effective  way.  The  Unitarian  can- 
not be  blind  to  the  fraction  of  truth  that  is  contained  in 
this  cherished  tradition  of  the  Church.  He  is  perfectly 
able  to  see  that  historically  it  has  done  a  great  work 
in  the  world,  but  for  himself  he  would  keep  it  as  far  as 
possible  out  of  sight.  What  interests  him  in  man  is 
not  this  very  obvious  diversity  of  aspect,  but  the  essen- 
tial unity  of  nature.  He  did  not  need  the  researches  of 
modern  science  to  teach  him  the  acute  interdependence 
of  body,  mind,  and  soul  for  the  sound  and  effective  work- 
ing of  each.     He  was  perfectly  prepared  to  learn  how 


64  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

hard  it  is  to  draw  the  hnes  that  separate  body  from 
mind  and  mind  from  soul.  It  was  no  shock  to  him  to 
hear  that  physical  pain  is  partly  subject  to  mental 
control  and  that  mental  processes,  emotions,  passions, 
may  partly  be  reduced  to  physical  terms,  tested  and 
measured  by  physical  devices.  These  things  have  come 
to  him  only  as  confirmations  of  what  he  had  thought 
out  in  less  formal  ways  before  —  that  man  is  essentially 
a  unit  and  cannot,  therefore,  be  treated  theologically  as 
a  being  divided  against  himself  and  so  doomed  to  ruin. 

It  is  in  this  spirit  and  having  in  mind  this  dominant 
sense  of  unity  that  the  Unitarian  approaches  the  ques- 
tions of  man's  origin,  his  obligations,  and  his  destiny. 
The  charming  fables  of  the  Hebrews,  as  well  as  those 
of  other  races,  in  regard  to  the  origin  of  man  interest 
him  as  so  many  naive  attempts  to  account  for  the 
obvious  facts  of  man's  common  experience.  As  man 
appears  here  on  earth,  in  daily  struggle,  each  one  with 
himself  and  all  with  their  surroundings,  it  is  plain  that  he 
is  limited  by  certain  controlling  conditions.  Men  should 
be  good,  wise,  just,  generous,  and  they  are  none  of 
these  things.  They  should  love  peace  and  they  are  at 
war;  they  should  be  content  with  Httle,  and  they  are 
striving  ever  after  more  at  the  cost  of  others;  above 
all,  they  are  slaves  to  a  pitiless  law  of  labor  that  com- 
pels  them   to   pass   in   a   soul-destroying   routine  lives 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  65 

that  might  be  spent  in  a  calm  repose  with  only  such 
activities  as  should  elevate  and  beautify.  A  horrid 
dualism  seems  to  exist  between  the  actual  human  life 
on  earth  and  the  Paradise  the  world  ought  to  be. 

So  long  as  men  clung  to  the  idea  of  a  sudden  act  of 
creation  by  a  being  who  could  claim  the  reverence  of 
his  conscious  creatures,  they  could  not  imagine  such  a 
creative  act  as  anything  but  benevolent.  The  state  of 
the  first  creation  must  have  been  such  as  was  to  be 
expected  of  a  work  ''fresh  from  the  hand  of  God." 
Hence  man,  as  a  part  —  the  most  important  part  —  of 
this  beneficent  creation,  must  have  begun  in  a  state  of 
perfection,  and  therefore,  in  order  to  reach  the  state 
of  imperfection  in  which  all  tradition  and  observation 
shows  him  to  be,  he  must  have  degenerated.  This 
degeneration  must  have  been  either  gradual  or  sudden. 
A  gradual  degeneration,  which  if  accepted  at  all  must 
be  thought  of  as  going  on  forever,  so  that  man  would 
appear  as  continually  growing  worse  through  all  time, 
past,  present,  and  future,  was  an  unthinkable  solution. 
Hence  men  came  to  the  notion  of  a  sudden  change  of 
nature,  a  ''fall"  from  an  original  high  estate  into  a 
condition  of  depravity. 

The  people  most  concerned,  for  our  purpose  the 
Hebrew  people,  were  not  seriously  affected  by  this 
calamity.     They    saved    themselves    by    the    agreeable 


66  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

doctrine  of  a  special  covenant  with  their  God,  whereby 
they  became  his  chosen  people,  guaranteed  in  their 
future  so  long  as  they  should  keep  themselves  pure  and 
faithful  in  his  service.  That  covenant  they  maintained, 
often  with  serious  shortcomings,  but  always  called  back 
to  fidelity  by  some  prophetic  voice  reminding  them  of 
their  obligation  and  pointing  them  to  their  destiny. 
The  Hebrew  beheved  in  an  indefinite  future  of  reunion 
with  God  under  the  leadership  of  a  final  prophet,  whose 
promised  coming  was  of  value  precisely  as  it  remained 
a  promise,  beckoning  the  people  toward  an  ever  unful- 
filled perfection  of  power  and  loyalty.  They  never  set 
a  definite  point  at  which  the  fallen  race  was  to  be  sud- 
denly arrested  in  its  doom  and  given  a  new  impulse 
toward  certain  recovery  of  its  original  unity  with  God. 

It  was  reserved  for  Christianity  to  take  this  step. 
Christian  theology,  elaborated  through  long  conflict 
and  under  many  influences  that  lay  outside  the  range 
of  Hebrew  thought,  drew  the  logical  conclusion  from 
the  doctrine  of  a  degenerate  world  and  declared  that  by 
a  specific  act  of  divine  compassion  this  fallen  world 
was  restored  to  its  original  harmony  with  its  creator. 
The  process  of  restoration  was,  to  be  sure,  conditioned 
by  certain  demands  upon  the  individual,  but  the  crisis 
in  human  affairs  was  none  the  less  marked  and  universal. 
The  cycle  of  creation,  fall,  and  recovery  was  complete. 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  67 

With  this  accepted,  Christian  speculation  went  on  to 
inquire  into  the  cause.  How  should  it  account  for  the 
fact  of  a  "fall"?  Several  possibilities  were  offered  by 
the  several  theologies  in  the  midst  of  which  this  specu- 
lation went  on.  It  might  have  been  dismissed  briefly 
as  a  mere  act  of  the  arbitrary  will  of  God,  dictating  to 
his  creatures  what  they  must  do  and  suffer  without 
reference  to  nearer  causes.  That  way  out,  however,  did 
not  commend  itself  to  the  higher  refinements  of  Graeco- 
Egyptian-Roman  subtlety  as  it  played  with  the  simple 
teaching  of  Jesus  in  a  determined  effort  to  bring  it  into 
harmony  at  once  with  Hebrew  fable  and  with  the  laws 
of  its  own  dialectic.  On  the  basis  of  a  single  and  uni- 
form divine  will  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  work 
out  a  system  of  spasmodic  creation,  fall,  and  recovery 
that  could  command  the  intelligence  and  the  conscience 
of  the  thinking  and  struggling  Christian  world. 

A  second  device  was  to  seek  the  cause  of  human  de- 
pravity in  the  hostile  activity  of  an  independent  Power, 
working  in  eternal  antagonism  to  the  great  and  benefi- 
cent design  of  God.  Precedents  for  such  an  explana- 
tion were  easily  found  in  the  existing  systems  of  thought. 
The  ''Devil"  was  a  familiar  figure  even  in  the  late 
Hebrew  speculation,  and  it  is  plain  how  great  the  temp- 
tation was  to  take  him  into  the  Christian  scheme  and 
give  him  a  decisive  part  to  play.     He  needed  only  to 


68  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

be  invested  with  powers  sufficiently  independent  to 
make  him  a  formidable  rival  to  the  creator  God,  and 
the  thing  was  done.  From  this  dualistic  solution,  how- 
ever, the  Christian  consciousness  shrank  with  instinc- 
tive dread.  The  Hebrew  inheritance  of  unity  saved  it 
from  so  fatal  a  step.  Dualism  was  formally  rejected  as 
the  final  solution  of  the  human  problem,  and  remained 
only  in  a  multitude  of  secondary  ideas  that  from  point 
to  point  arose  to  plague  the  imagination  of  every  age 
of  discussion.  The  Devil,  dethroned  as  the  effective 
cause  of  man's  defeat,  lingered  as  the  eager  agent  of  his 
misery  and  his  disharmony  with  the  divine. 

A  third  device  to  explain  the  working  of  the  theologi- 
cal cycle  brings  us  to  our  immediate  problem  of  the 
unity  of  human  nature.  If  the  cause  of  man's  "ruin" 
was  to  be  found  neither  in  the  sole  activity  of  God, 
because  that  seemed  to  imply  some  malevolent  quality 
in  the  divine  nature,  nor  in  the  action  of  a  rival  Power, 
because  such  rivalry  seemed  an  infringement  upon  the 
dignity  of  God,  it  remained  only  to  seek  an  explanation 
in  some  inherent  quality  of  man's  nature  itself.  That 
quality  was  found  in  the  distinctions  we  have  already 
noted  between  the  several  elements  composing  ^hat 
nature.  The  ''  fall  of  man  "  was  represented  as  a  triumph 
of  his  material  over  his  spiritual  element.  The  story  of 
the  Book  of  Genesis  was  accepted  as  the  divine  con- 


THE   NATURE  OF  MAN  69 

firmation  of  this  duality  of  nature.  The  duahstic 
tendencies  of  thought,  repudiated  in  their  reference  to 
the  nature  of  God,  found  their  expression  in  the  doc- 
trine of  the  nature  of  man.  The  thing  which  distin- 
guished man  from  Deity  on  the  one  hand  and  from  the 
brutes  on  the  other,  the  possession  of  a  highly  developed, 
complex  nature  was  declared  by  this  theology  to  be  the 
cause  of  his  ruin.  Man  was  the  cause  of  his  own  de- 
struction by  virtue  of  being  man.  The  very  nature  that 
was  given  him  without  his  own  desire  was  made  the 
reason  for  his  eternal  incapacity  to  do  right.  Still  more, 
this  incapacity  to  do  right  was  then  charged  against 
him  as  a  fault.  He  was  held  responsible  for  a  sin  which 
he  was  forced  to  commit  in  consequence  of  the  posses- 
sion of  a  nature  that  was  in  itself  ''  sinful."  The  definition 
of  sin  was  stretched  to  cover  not  merely  actions,  but  a 
state  of  being,  an  attitude,  a  tendency,  without  which 
man  would  not  have  been  man,  but  something  either 
infinitely  higher  or  infinitely  lower.  The  thought  of 
the  Church  on  this  subject  from  the  days  of  Augustine 
until  now  has  been  determined  by  the  assumption  of 
that  fatal  dualism  in  man  which  could  be  solved  only 
by  the  intervention  of  some  mysterious  force  not  vitiated 
by  the  realities  of  human  frailty. 

The  Unitarian  thought  of  man  goes  at  once  to  the 
root  of  this  whole  matter  with  its  positive  assertion  of 


yo  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  unity  of  human  nature.  It  takes  away  from  the 
idea  of  man  all  those  dualisms  which  have  puzzled  and 
dismayed  the  theologians  of  all  ages.  It  recognizes 
clearly  the  complexity  of  man's  being,  but  it  sees  in  this 
complexity  only  a  community  of  powers,  not  an  an- 
tagonism. The  body  is,  from  this  point  of  view,  not  a 
thing  to  be  ashamed  of  because  it  is  not  soul.  Neither 
is  the  soul  degraded  because  it  is  bound  up  with  the 
marvellous  mechanism  of  the  body.  The  mind,  acutely 
dependent  as  it  is  upon  the  body's  well-being,  cannot 
look  with  contempt  upon  its  indispensable  ally.  Neither 
can  the  body,  if  it  will  attain  its  best  development, 
afford  to  neglect  the  help  it  can  constantly  gain  from 
the  labor  of  the  mind.  Our  day  is  conscious,  as  no 
other  has  been,  of  the  part  played  by  mental  soundness 
in  maintaining  that  physical  health  which  in  turn  is 
the  condition  of  active  mental  work.  So  greatly  is  our 
community  inspired  with  these  ideas  of  reciprocity 
between  the  several  parts  of  human  nature  that  many 
have  elevated  them  into  a  religion,  and  indeed  all  re- 
ligions are  feeling  profoundly  the  reaction  of  them  upon 
their  most  cherished  doctrines.  The  soul,  in  its  striv- 
ing after  a  right  relation  to  God,  is  finding  its  chief 
aids  in  well-trained,  well-nourished,  and  well-disciplined 
bodies  and  in  equally  well-informed,  well-balanced,  and 
disciplined   minds.     These   tendencies   of   our   day   are 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  7 1 

only  the  expression  in  other  forms  of  ideas  familiar  to 
every  Unitarian  mind.  They  have  come  to  the  Uni- 
tarian consciousness  as  so  many  echoes  of  itself.  They 
do  not  alarm  it.  Their  crudenesses,  their  excesses,  their 
follies  even,  cannot  blind  it  to  the  essential  comradeship 
of  many  of  their  fundamental  ideas  with  its  own.  It 
sees,  through  their  shabby  decorations  of  prophets  and 
prophetesses,  revelations,  inspirations,  gospels,  apostles, 
and  all  the  familiar  stage  properties  of  fanaticism,  the 
one  great  common  possession  of  a  faith  in  human  nature. 
Like  them  in  their  sounder  parts,  Unitarianism  believes 
in  man's  capacity  to  serve  himself  through  the  har- 
monious working  together  of  those  elements  which  theo- 
logians have  thought  of  as  warring  against  each  other. 

There  is  no  more  curious  phenomenon  of  our  time 
than  these  movements  of  masses  of  plain  thinking  people 
toward  forms  of  religious  expression  in  which  the  welfare 
of  the  body,  in  its  relation  to  the  life  of  the  spirit,  plays 
so  important  a  part.  They  have  been  accompanied 
by  inevitable  e^esses.  Their  pure  motives  have  been 
mingled  with  others  less  able  to  bear  the  light  of  day. 
Their  '^science"  has  often  been  mere  folly,  and  their 
social  morality  more  than  questionable.  Yet  they  have 
served  their  generation  and  may  serve  it  yet  more  by 
reminding  men  in  these  dramatic  ways  of  that  essential 
unity  we  are  here  considering.     They  have  been  bitterly 


72  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

and  rightly  condemned  for  many  of  their  practices  and 
for  not  a  few  of  their  ideas.  Even  the  best  of  them 
have  been  regarded  as  a  danger  to  society,  and  legisla- 
tion has  been  demanded  to  check  their  progress.  In 
this  attitude  it  will  probably  be  found  that  Unitarians 
have  taken  little  share.  Probably,  too,  it  would  appear 
that  they  were  not  wholly  conscious  of  the  deeper 
reasons  for  their  feeling  on  the  subject.  Yet,  while  the 
more  strictly  organized  sects  of  Christians  have  viewed 
these  modern  movements  with  mingled  horror  and  con- 
tempt. Unitarians  have  been  willing  to  wait  and  see 
whither  they  might  lead.  Others  have  said  :  These  out- 
breaks of  human  folly  are  only  the  successors  of  many 
others  that  have  been  since  the  Church  began ;  as  those 
earlier  fanaticisms  melted  away  or  made  their  peace 
with  the  Church,  so  these  are  bound  to  do,  and  m^ean- 
while  the  right  thing  is  to  point  out  their  dangers  and 
warn  all  sound-minded  persons  against  them.  But  the 
natural  Unitarian  attitude  is :  These  are,  indeed,  move- 
ments similar  in  many  ways  to  scores  of  others  that 
have  preceded  them;  but  for  one  thing,  that  alone 
would  be  evidence  of  a  certain  value;  for  we  may  be 
sure  that  nothing  persists  in  this  world  unless  it  has 
some  valuable  content  for  humanity.  And  then  again : 
it  is  not  enough  to  say  that  those  earlier  movements 
merely  vanished  into  thin  air  at  the  dictation  of  the 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN 


73 


powers  that  were.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  precisely 
through  these  periodical  outbreaks  of  the  spirit  of  un- 
rest, that  the  best  life  of  the  Church  has  been  sustained 
and  rein vigora ted.  To  quench  that  spirit  would  be  to 
reduce  the  thought  of  religion  to  a  dead  level  of  dull 
formality.  Let  it  rather  go  on  until  its  unworthy  parts 
shall  have  been  sloughed  off  and  its  worthy  parts  made 
to  appear  in  their  true  value. 

If  this  seems  to  be  a  digression  from  the  main  purpose 
of  the  present  chapter,  it  is  so  only  in  so  far  as  it  con- 
cerns the  outward  aspect  of  the  Unitarian  attitude 
toward  new  presentations  of  possible  truth.  The  inner 
kernel  of  the  matter  is  the  essential  unity  of  man's 
nature  as  the  key  to  his  religious  expression.  On  that 
point  it  may  now  be  sufficiently  clear  that  Unitarianism 
is  ready  to  join  in  fellowship  with  every  endeavor  to 
found  religion  and  morality  on  a  harmony  rather  than 
on  a  dissonance  among  the  elements  of  human  nature. 

If  Unitarianism  is  disposed  to  be  thus  widely  hos- 
pitable towards  ideas  and  movements  it  does  not  ap- 
prove, and  from  which  it  is  bound  to  keep  itself  free, 
it  is  easily  to  be  seen  what  would  be  its  attitude  toward 
others  which  more  nearly  approach  its  own  essential 
spirit.  If  even  pseudo  science,  so  long  as  it  is  honest, 
seems  worthy  of  a  certain  respect,  how  much  more  the 
labors  and  results  of  men  working  in  a  true  scientific 


74  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

spirit.  When,  a  generation  and  more  ago,  all  that  vast 
clearing  up  of  the  mind  took  place  to  which  we  give, 
rather  crudely,  the  name  of  the  development  theory,  it 
was  received  by  the  world  of  dogmatic  theology,  pro- 
fessional and  lay  alike,  with  the  utmost  hesitation  and 
dread.  An  immense  fraction,  perhaps  a  majority,  of 
Christian  men  even  to-day  reject  it  with  a  certain  horror. 
Somehow  the  notion  that  mankind  came  into  existence 
gradually  instead  of  suddenly  seems  to  imply  a  reproach 
against  the  very  idea  of  God;  as  if  a  God  working  by 
rational  causes  were  less  worthy  of  respect  than  one 
working  by  spasmodic  effort.  The  mere  application  of 
a  scientific  method  to  religious  questions  had  and  has  of 
itself  a  certain  suggestion  of  blasphemy.  ''Can  man  by 
searching  find  out  God?"  If  it  was  said  that  the 
origin  of  man  is  not  a  religious  but  a  scientific  problem, 
the  reply  was  that  the  two  could  not  here  be  separated, 
and  therefore  the  only  safety  lay  in  checking  at  once  so 
dangerous  a  process. 

Now,  in  this  feeling  of  alarm  at  the  advance  of  physi- 
cal science  Unitarianism  from  the  first  did  not  greatly 
share.  It  perceived  instinctively  that  the  ideas  involved 
in  the  notion  of  development  were  fundamentally  akin 
to  its  own.  Its  reception  of  this  new  key  to  the  prob- 
lem of  life  was  prompt  and  hearty.  Even  long  before 
the  general  consciousness  of  the  modern  world  had  come 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  75 

by  various  processes  to  adjust  itself  to  this  new  way  of 
thinking  about  the  origins  of  human  life,  many  Uni- 
tarians had  accepted  it  and  taken  the  consequences. 
Here  again  they  were  not  alarmed  by  extremes.  There 
were  indeed,  for  the  moment,  voices  raised  in  the  an- 
cient cry  that  now  at  last  God  was  banished  from  the 
world,  and  life,  human  as  well  as  the  rest,  was  reduced 
to  a  thing  of  tissues  and  cells,  generation  and  decay. 
The  answer  of  the  theologians  in  general  was  to  pro- 
claim once  more,  and  more  emphatically,  their  doctrine 
of  the  divided  nature.  The  soul  must  still  be  thought 
of  as  something  separate,  put  into  the  body  from  the 
outside  at  some  moment  of  its  production,  and  there- 
fore, of  course,  exempt  from  the  working  of  ''natural" 
law. 

Unitarians  caught  at  once  the  clue  to  the  whole  matter. 
The  principle  of  unity  must  work  here  as  everywhere 
else.  The  harmony  of  soul  and  body  must  be  as  true 
under  one  theory  of  origin  as  another.  So  far  as  the 
ultimate  question  of  the  beginning  of  life  was  concerned 
it  could  not  matter.  No  human  theory  could  touch 
that;  for  by  its  very  definition  the  life  principle  eludes 
and  always  will  elude  the  last  analysis  of  science.  No 
sane  scientist  expects  or  even  desires  to  find  it.  He  sees 
that  its  discovery  would  from  the  first  moment  result 
in  the  destruction  of  the  system  of  things  with  which 


76  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

he  has  to  deal.  His  ambition  is  bounded  within  tlie 
circle  of  phenomena  offered  to  him  by  the  world  as  it  is, 
and  he  makes  no  claims  to  occult  wisdom  of  any  sort. 
The  Unitarian  is  content  to  follow  the  modesty  of  the 
true  scientist.  He  rejoices  in  every  revelation  of  the 
working  of  natural  law,  because,  as  a  religious  being,  he 
feels  in  every  increase  of  knowledge  also  an  increase  of 
faith  in  the  things  that  meaii  most  to  him.  The  limita- 
tions of  science  no  more  disturb  him  than  they  do  the 
scientist  himself.  An  impatient  scientist  would  go  mad, 
and  it  is  a  sign  of  sanity  in  thought  when  men  fairly 
and  frankly  recognize  the  limits  of  their  vision  and 
refuse  to  invent  explanations  of  unexplainable  things. 
It  is  true  that  science  has  not  solved  the  riddle  of  exist- 
ence. It  never  will ;  it  makes  no  claim  to  do  so ;  but 
it  has  given  to  serious,  independent,  and  rational  thought 
about  the  conditions  of  existence  a  hundred  new  sup- 
ports. Above  all  it  has  wonderfully  helped  to  make 
clear  the  unity  of  human  nature  as  a  part  of  the  unity 
of  all  life.  If  we  are  alarmed  lest  by  the  scientific 
process  the  soul  be  reduced  to  a  matter  of  quickened 
heart-beats,  or  irregular  nerve-stimulation,  or  a  succes- 
sion of  unconscious  habits,  we  are  at  liberty  at  any 
moment  to  translate  all  these  fine  things  back  again 
into  the  language  of  the  spiritual  life,  and  there  we 
have  it  once  more,  after  all,  —  the  ''soul,"  as  mysterious 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  77 

as  ever,  as  independent  of  conscious  control,  yet  linked 
inseparably,  as  we  knew  it  was  before,  to  the  material 
body  it  at  once  serves  and  is  served  by.  The  feeling  of 
Unitarians  in  regard  to  the  whole  question  of  the  rela- 
tion of  faith  and  knowledge,  to  which  we  must  often 
refer,  has  no  better  illustration  than  in  this  matter  of 
the  nature  of  man  as  a  unit.  It  is  inconceivable  that 
any  honest  fact  of  science  should  contradict  any  worthy 
motion  of  the  spiritual  life.  Science  may  modify  faith, 
may  give  it  new  forms  of  expression,  will  certainly  supply 
it  with  many  new  illustrations,  but  it  can  never  make 
untrue  what  was  once  true. 

Historically  the  Unitarian  view  of  human  nature 
has  its  foundations  far  back  in  the  early  ages  of 
Christian  controversy.  In  fact,  what  proved  to  be  the 
dominant  belief  of  formal  Christianity,  the  Augustinian 
doctrine  of  a  fallen  nature  in  antagonism  with  God  and 
hence  needing  a  "scheme"  of  reconciliation,  this  ''ortho- 
doxy" of  the  creeds  was  brought  into  form  largely  through 
its  resistance  to  another  conception  known  generally  as 
the  "Pelagian."  Without  going  into  the  refinements  of 
that  ancient,  yet  still  fresh  and  living,  controversy,  we 
may  restate  the  essential  point  of  it  as  follows.  Man, 
according  to  the  Pelagian  view,  was  conceived  of  as  a 
being  brought  into  the  world  with  a  nature  which  of 
itself  was  in  harmony  with  the  divine  order.     True,  the 


78  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

first  man  suffered  a  ''fall,"  but  this  was  in  consequence 
of  a  wrong  decision  of  his  will  and  did  not  produce  in 
his  offspring  the  loss  of  will-power  toward  right  action 
—  that  is,  action  in  harmony  with  the  will  of  God.  The 
soul  of  every  new-born  man  is,  like  that  of  the  first 
man,  a  tabula  rasa  on  which  he  and  he  alone  is  to  write 
the  record  of  success  and  failure  which  makes  up  the 
story  of  every  human  fife.  Some  men  go  right  and 
some  go  wrong,  but  none  goes  wholly  right  or  wholly 
wrong.  Whether  a  man  becomes  a  good  man  or  a  bad 
man  depends  upon  the  balance  of  his  choices.  The 
habit  of  good  living  helps  toward  further  good  and 
equally  the  habit  of  evil  begets  further  ill-doing.  So, 
without  doubt,  the  habit  of  choice  is  inherited,  and  the 
son  of  the  good  man  has  an  advantage  in  the  struggle 
for  good.  In  this  sense  it  is  possible  to  say  that  good 
and  evil  are  hereditary,  but  only  in  this  sense.  Non 
possum  non  habere  possibilitatem  boni  —  nothing  can 
deprive  me  of  the  power  of,  right  action.  The  possi- 
bility of  doing  right,  freedom  of  the  will  and  hence 
moral  responsibility  and  hence  praise-  or  blame- worthi- 
ness, this  is  the  series  of  qualities  on  which  the  Pelagian 
definition  of  man  is  based.  Of  course  the  terminol- 
ogy of  this  ancient  discussion  was  absolutely  deter- 
mined by  the  habit  of  the  time.  It  involved  the  whole 
Hebrew  assumption  of  sudden  creation,  of  first  parents, 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  79 

of  good  and  evil  as  entities,  of  fall  and  subsequent 
restoration.  It  needs  translating  into  the  scientific 
language  of  our  time,  but  so  translated  it  gives  fairly 
well  the  most  important  elements  of  Unitarian  thought. 
Man,  complex  but  normally  harmonious  in  his  nature, 
is  what  he  is  by  reason  of  a  rational  and  normal  develop- 
ment from  the  simple,  primal  impulses  of  self-preserva- 
tion to  the  most  complicated,  but  not  on  that  account 
the  less  natural,  processes  of  a  highly  organized  indi- 
vidual and  social  existence. 

The  Unitarian  is  aware  that  in  thus  simpHfying  and 
unifying  the  definition  of  man,  he  is  leaving  open  still 
the  chasm  that  divides  man  from  all  other  rational 
beings.  He  realizes  that  the  instinct  of  the  highest 
brutes  is  different  from  the  conscious  reason  of  man. 
He  perceives  in  man  a  moral  idealism  of  which  so  far 
no  such  positive  evidence  has  been  found  in  the  brute 
as  to  command  general  acceptance  by  careful  observ- 
ers. The  conscious  social  purpose  that  directs  so  large 
a  part  of  man's  activity  finds  only  apparent  counter- 
parts in  the  aggregations  of  animal  Kfe. 

But,  in  the  first  place,  the  chasm  has  been  narrow- 
ing perceptibly  as  we  have  learned  more  and  more  of 
the  mental  processes  both  of  men  and  of  animals.  We 
have  learned  to  think  far  more  respectfully  of  our 
humble  companions  as  we  have  studied  more  carefully 


8o  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

and  with  more  open  minds  the  working  of  their  powers 
most  nearly  akin  to  our  own.  The  range  of  illustration 
of  actions  on  their  part  obviously  directed  towards  a 
desired  end  —  even  towards  ends  that  must  be  new  to 
their  race  experience  —  has  been  greatly  increased : 
the  horse  freeing  himself  from  a  halter-strap  fastened 
in  a  novel  way,  or  untying  knots  with  his  teeth,  or 
worrying  the  lock  of  a  grain  bin  until  he  can  Hft  the 
lid,  or  drawing  his  bedding  within  reach  by  unusual 
movements  of  his  foot;  the  dog  obviously  planning  in 
advance  some  action  to  make  himself  comfortable  or  to 
gratify  some  pet  whim;  not  to  mention  those  marvellous 
performances  of  memory  which  might  perhaps  more 
easily  be  disposed  of  as  merely  instinctive  —  the  squirrel 
recovering  food  buried  months  before  over  a  widely 
extended  field,  the  dog  or  the  cat  finding  its  way 
over  himdreds  of  miles  of  road  it  had  travelled  but  once 
before,  —  all  these  and  many  that  might  be  added 
must  give  us  pause  in  any  absolute  conclusion  as  to 
lack  of  conscious  mental  power  in  the  brute.  In  fact 
so  credulous  has  our  time  become  in  these  matters  that 
many  highly  cultivated  minds  have  been  wilKng  to 
accept  utterly  impossible  tales  about  ''mathematical 
horses,"  "psychological  dogs,"  and  other  marvels  of 
human  training.  It  is  even  a  little  humihating  to  a 
mere   human   being    to    consider   his   inferiority   in    so 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  8l 

many  respects  to  his  ''inferior"  cousins  —  the  wonderful 
foot  and  tail  of  the  ape,  the  scent  of  the  hound,  the  eye 
of  the  eagle ;  above  all,  that  amazing  sixth  sense  of 
direction,  which  we  have  entirely  lost,  but  which  seems 
to  guide  so  many  movements  of  animal  life. 

It  might  be  possible  to  go  even  further  and  to  dis- 
cover in  many  animals  at  least  a  rudimentary  con- 
science. The  well- trained  dog  resists  temptation  under 
tr3dng  circumstances  in  a  way  to  shame  the  conscience 
of  average  humanity.  If  we  say  this  is  mere  fear  of 
punishment  inspired  by  the  memory  of  past  experi- 
ences, how  large  a  part  of  the  sensitiveness  of  most 
human  consciences  is  made  up  of  the  same  degrading 
but  highly  educative  emotion  ?  Is  the  difference,  after 
all,  one  of  degree  rather  than  of  kind  ?  If  we  compare 
the  lowest  man  with  the  highest  brute,  the  process  of 
transition  seems  not  only  possible  but  inevitable. 

Even  the  social  instinct  which  binds  men  together  in 
so  many  varieties  of  activity  seems  not  wholly  lacking 
in  animals.  Sometimes  it  appears  in  common  efforts 
apparently  directed  to  some  well-considered  end,  some- 
times in  what  seems  like  the  voluntary  subjection  of 
many  to  the  guidance  of  one.  The  brute  family  has  often 
startling  resemblances  to  that  family  hfe  which  is  the 
germ  of  the  human  state.  It  is  easy  to  beHeve,  as 
many  have  done,  that  some  animals  are  really  organized 


82  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

socially  into  an  actual  political  body  with  its  officials, 
its  laws,  and  its  punishments. 

Thus  the  chasm  that  divides  man  from  the  lower, 
or  let  us  rather  say  from  the  other,  forms  of  or- 
ganized life  has  been  narrowing.  The  marvels  of  com- 
parative anatomy,  especially  the  studies  of  embryonic 
life,  have  shown  us  how  the  several  functions  of  the 
individual,  man  or  beast  or  plant,  are  differentiated  out 
of  primordial  cells  so  similar  that  they  cannot  be  dis- 
tinguished. So  also  what  is  true  of  the  individual  is 
true  of  the  race.  The  varieties  of  man,  no  less  than 
the  varieties  of  other  animals  and  plants,  are  shown  as 
the  result  of  processes  that  can  largely  be  traced  as 
^'natural"  and  inevitable.  The  chasm  has  been  greatly 
narrowed,  but  it  still  remains;  for  so  far  as  we  can  see 
there  is  nothing  in  any  beuig  except  man  even  remotely 
corresponding  to  the  religious  sense  as  we  have  defined 
it  —  that  is,  as  a  positive  and  conscious  reaching  out  of 
the  human  soul  towards  invisible  powers  outside  itself, 
that  influence  its  action  and  to  which  it  owes  some 
kind  of  responsibility. 

It  is  the  certainty  that,  no  matter  how  far  science 
may  go,  it  can  never  touch  this  supreme  distinction  of 
man  that  makes  the  Unitarian  so  naturally  and  so 
completely  free  from  any  dread  whatever  as  to  the 
effect  of  further  knowledge  upon  man's  religious  nature. 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  83 

That  nature  he  regards  as  so  absolutely  a  part  of  man 
that  even  when  men  take  the  greatest  pains  to  deny  it, 
he,  the  Unitarian,  sees  in  such  denial  only  those  tem- 
porary and  local  aberrations  to  which  all  ideas  are 
subject.  Denial  of  the  religious  nature  touches  only 
some  of  the  imperfect  forms  and  expressions  under 
which  religion  has  disguised  itself.  The  forms  change, 
the  expressions  are  modified,  but  the  great  current  of 
religious  life  moves  on  in  spite  of  all  checks  and  diver- 
sions. 

It  follows  quite  naturally  from  this  view  of  the  in- 
dividual as  a  being  capable  of  good  action,  i.e.  action 
in  harmony  with  the  will  of  God,  that  all  mankind  is 
equally  included  in  the  divine  order.  The  Unitarian 
sees  no  possible  distinction  in  essence  or  in  possibiHty 
of  the  highest  spiritual  attainment  between  the  ''highest" 
and  the  ''lowest"  families  of  men  upon  the  earth. 
Whatever  may  be  the  "divine  plan"  for  man's  exist- 
ence here  or  heareaf ter  —  and  as  to  this  plan  the  Uni- 
tarian professes  a  modest  uncertainty  —  it  must  in- 
clude all  men.  There  can  be  no  inside  and  outside  to 
the  great  estate  wherein  the  children  of  men  are  invited 
to  dwell.  No  matter  how  vast  the  distance  that  seems 
to  separate  the  "higher"  from  the  "lower"  stages  of 
human  development,  the  road  travelled  by  each  branch 
of  the  human  family  on  its  upward  way  is  essentially 


84  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  same.  All  march  by  the  same  stations  of  increasing 
economic  demand  and  supply.  All  are  subject  to  the 
law  of  social  morality,  no  matter  in  how  diverse  forms 
it  may  manifest  itself.  In  all  the  same  reHgious  im- 
pulse reaches  out  into  the  unknown  and  seeks  to  estab- 
Ksh  relations  with  it.  The  same  law  which  makes  the 
Unitarian  feel  in  the  individual  an  essential  harmony 
working  itself  out  through  continuous  struggle,  makes 
him  also  feel  in  mankind  as  a  whole  an  essential  unity 
expressing  itself  under  infinitely  diverse  forms.  The 
"plan  of  salvation,"  given  as  generous  a  definition  as  is 
humanly  thinkable,  must  be  for  all  men.  Nor  is  it,  in 
the  thought  of  Unitarians,  essential  that  the  process  of 
*' salvation"  be  similar  in  detail  for  all  men  or  for  men 
in  all  ages.  If  there  must  be  an  historic  word  to  ex- 
press the  thing  they  understand  by  ''salvation,"  they 
prefer  the  word  "justification."  Not  that  either  of 
these  words  plays  any  considerable  part  in  their  ordi- 
nary vocabulary;  but  "justification"  carries  an  idea 
that  appeals  naturally  to  their  imagination.  We  shall 
have  to  return  to  this  idea  in  its  proper  place;  enough 
here  to  say  that  from  the  Unitarian  thought  about  the 
unity  of  mankind,  there  follows  naturally  the  notion  of 
justification,  i.e.  the  "right"  relation  of  the  human 
soul  to  God  as  something  progressive  in  time  and  some- 
thing varied  in  form.     The   Unitarian  is  able   to  con- 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  85 

ceive  of  the  '' lowest"  type  of  the  human  worshipper  as 
being  quite  as  really  justified  in  view  of  his  stage  of 
development  as  is  the  most  orthodox  of  civilized  church 
members  judged  by  the  possibilities  of  the  society  in 
which  he  lives.  Nay,  he  is  not  sure  but  that  the  honest 
Polynesian  goes  down  to  his  house  justified  rather  than 
that  other. 

The  statement  of  the  historic,  "Pelagian,"  Unitarian 
view  of  human  nature  includes  the  idea  of  the  freedom 
of  the  human  will.  It  cannot  be  supposed  that  the 
Unitarian  should  have  reached  the  ultimate  solution  of 
a  philosophic  problem  that  has  puzzled  the  wisest  of  the 
world's  thinkers  from  the  beginning  until  now.  If  he 
were  even  to  undertake  such  a  solution  he  would  be 
ranging  himself  with  the  philosophers,  not  with  the 
seekers  after  religious  satisfaction;  and  he  confesses 
himself  in  the  class  of  these,  not  of  those.  He  does  not 
seek  to  solve  the  problem;  he  aims  only  to  take  an 
attitude  towards  it.  He  faces  it  with  a  due  sense  of  its 
difficulty,  but  without  dread;  for  his  notion  of  a  God 
is  free  from  any  taint  of  the  awful  cruelty  of  a  law  im- 
posed upon  man  so  hard  that  his  own  essential  nature 
makes  it  impossible  for  him  to  obey  it. 

Like  every  other  thinker  upon  the  problem  of  the 
human  will,  the  Unitarian  finds  himself  between  two 
extremes:  the  liherum  arhitrium  of  the  Pelagians  and  the 


86  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

arbilrium  servum  of  Augustine,  of  Luther,  and  of  Calvin. 
If  he  were  called  upon  to  choose  absolutely  between 
these  extremes,  there  is  no  doubt  whatever  as  to  his 
choice.  He  would  accept  the  Pelagian  horn  of  the 
dilemma  and  take  the  consequences.  That  is  the  side 
toward  which  all  his  natural  instincts  and  the  whole 
logic  of  his  presuppositions  inevitably  lead  him.  His 
first  impulse  would  be  to  declare:  ''My  will  is  free.  I 
know  it  because  I  am  myself,  and  every  part  of  me 
proclaims  that  without  this  supreme  endowment  I 
should  be  only  the  echo,  the  instrument,  the  shadow  of 
something  other  than  myself.  It  is  this  gift  of  freedom 
that  creates  my  sense  of  right  and  wrong;  for  without 
Hberty  I  should  have  no  responsibihty ;  without  respon- 
sibihty  I  should  lose  everything  that  makes  my  actions 
worthy  of  being  described  as  right  or  wrong;  and  if  I 
may  not  be  rewarded  in  any  sense  for  my  good  action, 
what  conceivable  motive  is  there  for  me  to  be  good? 
I  am  conscious  of  a  moral  law  laid  upon  me.  That  is  a 
fact  from  which  I  cannot  escape.  But  now,  a  God  who 
would  impose  upon  me  a  moral  law  which  He  had  made 
me  essentially  incapable  of  obeying  would  be  to  me  an 
im thinkable  monster." 

And  yet,  no  sooner  has  he  thus  clearly  formulated  his 
absolute  demand  for  the  freedom  of  his  will,  than  like 
all  his  predecessors  he  becomes  conscious  of  a  certain 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  87 

weakness  in  it.  Quite  as  imperative  as  the  claim  of 
liberty  is  that  other  consciousness  of  a  will  greater  than 
his  own.  He  knows  that  he  is  free  to  act ;  he  cannot 
conceive  of  life  without  such  freedom.  But  at  the 
same  moment  he  knows  equally  that  his  own  individual 
life  is  but  a  part  in  a  greater  whole.  The  law  of  his 
being  is  a  fragment  of  the  greater  law  by  which  the 
whole  creation  moves.  If  he  cannot  conceive  of  a  man 
except  as  master  of  his  will,  no  more  can  he  conceive  of 
a  universe  except  as  governed  in  all  its  parts  by  one  all- 
directing  principle.  In  that  universe  man  is  a  part. 
He  must  therefore  be  subject  to  that  other  power  not 
himself  that  guides  the  universe  and  him  with  it. 

The  older  theologies  in  reaching  this  point  helped 
themselves  out  by  various  devices.  Sometimes  they 
said:  ''Yes,  man's  will  is  free  indeed,  but  it  is  free  only 
to  do  evil !  If  a  man  beheve  himself  to  be  doing  right, 
to  be  acting,  that  is,  in  harmony  with  the  divine  will, 
he  is  deceiving  himself.  His  actions,  so  far  as  they 
proceed  from  his  own  natural  impulses,  are  evil,  i.e. 
they  are  in  opposition  to  the  divine  will,  and  they  can 
be  brought  into  harmony  with  it  only  through  some 
process  foreign  to  their  own  real  nature." 

Sometimes  the  theologies  of  the  past  said:  ''Yes, 
the  will  of  man  is  free,  but  only  in  such  things  as  per- 
tain to  the  ordinary  dealings  of  daily  life  (justUia  civilis). 


88  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

In  all  that  deals  with  the  life  of  the  spirit,  man's  will 
can  do  naturally  only  evil.  To  do  good,  it  must  be 
specifically  assisted,  even  'prevented,'  by  an  act  of 
divine  power  from  without."  Or,  again,  they  tried  to 
bring  these  two  agencies,  the  natural  will  of  man  and 
the  effective  grace  of  God,  into  cooperation,  like  part- 
ners in  business,  as  it  were,  in  a  purely  external  and 
unreconciled  combination.  When  this  was  done  the 
share  of  the  human  was  reduced  to  its  lowest  terms, 
so  that  the  preponderance  of  the  divine  control  might 
be  saved  to  its  utmost  limit. 

No  one  of  these  devices  is  satisfactory  to  the  Uni- 
tarian. To  say  that  man's  will  is  free  only  to  do  evil 
seems  to  him  to  be  the  same  thing  as  saying  that  it  is 
not  free  at  all.  To  make  a  distinction  between  the 
righteousness  shown  in  one's  dealings  with  one's  fellow- 
men  in  everyday  affairs  and  that  which  governs  man 
in  his  relations  to  God,  seems  to  him  to  be  drawing  a 
fictitious  line  of  separation  between  things  that  essen- 
tially belong  together.  Justitia  civilis  is  to  him  only 
another  manifestation  of  the  justitia  divina,  which  is  at 
once  its  standard  and  its  source.  So,  again,  the  attempt 
to  fix  by  any  rational  process  the  proportion  between 
the  human  element  and  the  divine  in  man's  action 
seems  to  him  an  idle  waste  of  energy.  He  can  conceive 
of  no  point  at  which  the  human  will  could  either  begin 


THE  NATURE  OF   MAN  89 

or  cease  to  be  free  or  to  be  controlled  by  the  divine 
will. 

What,  then,  is  the  Unitarian  thought  on  this  most 
intricate  of  all  problems?  It  is  not  a  philosophical 
solution;  it  is  a  religious  and  a  moral  conclusion.  It 
accepts  the  freedom  of  the  human  will,  because  other- 
wise it  cannot  conceive  of  human  nature  at  all.  At 
the  same  time  it  tries  so  to  define  the  human  will  that 
it  shall  appear  as  itself  a  part  of  that  divine  plan  to 
which  it  has  so  often  been  represented  as  in  opposition. 
The  part  cannot  be  in  essential  opposition  to  the  whole, 
any  more  than  a  wheel  in  a  great  mechanism  can  be 
hostile  to  the  whole.  It  may  be  an  imperfect  wheel; 
it  may  be  injured;  it  may  be  badly  fitted  to  the  rest; 
it  may  need  oiling,  but  essentially  it  must  work  with 
all  the  other  parts  in  harmony  towards  the  desired  end. 
It  cannot  be  so  geared  that  it  shall  work  backward  in- 
stead of  forward.  The  Unitarian  finds  his  satisfaction 
in  the  thought  that  his  will  is  given  him  by  the  same 
Power  that  directs  the  universe  and  that  it  must  there- 
fore be  essentially  good.  He  regrets  its  weakness;  he 
confesses  and  deplores  its  shortcomings.  It  has  some- 
times gone  wrong  in  the  past,  and  he  is  sure  that  it 
will  sometimes  go  wrong  in  the  future.  Yet  he  knows 
that  all  the  real  satisfactions  of  his  life  have  come 
through   this   same   despised  will,  —  his  victories   over 


90  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  temptations  of  ease  and  power  and  lust;  his  sac- 
rifices of  immediate  gratification  for  remote  satisfaction ; 
his  silent  endurance  of  scorn  and  pain  and  misunder- 
standing —  all  these  he  traces  to  the  activity  of  this 
will,  that  at  every  point  has  determined  his  choice  and 
so  helped  to  fix  his  character  for  good.  These  victories 
of  his  will  he  does  not  think  of  as  wholly  victories  over 
self;  for  when  he  tries  to  define  his  self,  he  finds  his 
will  as  essentially  a  part  of  it,  and  the  best  part  at  that. 
As  he  reads  the  pathetic  parable  of  the  spendthrift 
youth,  he  finds  its  kernel  in  the  words,  ''He  came  to 
himself y  It  was  the  discovery  of  the  real  self  in  him 
that  led  to  his  recovery,  and  it  was  his  own  will  that 
lifted  him  up  and  set  him  on  his  feet  and  led  him  back 
into  his  father's  house. 

No,  the  Unitarian  cannot  set  his  will  over  against 
himself  as  a  separate  thing,  which  may  upon  occasion 
go  into  opposition  to  him.  If  his  will  is  strong,  he  is 
strong ;  if  his  will  is  weak,  he  is  weak.  With  it  he  him- 
self turns  toward  good  or  towards  evil,  and  it  is  only 
through  his  will  that  these  words  ''good"  and  "evil" 
have  any  meaning  for  him.  In  any  case  his  will  is  his 
own,  and  what  he  does  by  it  cannot  be  reckoned  to  the 
account  of  any  one  else.  To  charge  his  weakness  upon 
any  other  being  or  series  of  beings  is  a  base  evasion. 
To  ascribe  his  strength  wholly  to  any  power  outside 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  9 I 

himself  is  equally  an  uncalled-for  reflection  upon  the 
human  nature  he  bears.  It  is  impossible  to  put  the 
Unitarian  point  of  view  into  any  better  words  than  these  : 

"Our  wills  are  oars  —  we  know  not  how. 
Our  wills  are  ours,  to  make  them  thine." 

My  will  is  my  own,  though  I  do  not  care  to  go  into 
the  question  how  I  came  by  it.  It  is  my  very  own; 
and  yet  it  is  not  a  treasure  which  I  am  at  liberty  to 
throw  away  or  to  diminish.  It  is  my  own  only  under 
the  condition  that  I  make  it  also  a  part  of  that  greater 
Will  by  which  all  the  harmonies  of  the  world  are  main- 
tained and  by  which  the  perpetual  struggle  that  is  the 
law  of  Hfe  is  guided  towards  a  final  harmony.  That  is 
the  rehgious  and  moral  conclusion  to  which  the  Uni- 
tarian is  led  by  every  instinct  of  his  nature  and  by  the 
rational  working  of  his  mind.  The  vexed  problem  of 
the  human  will  is  solved  for  him,  as  far  as  it  ever  can  be 
solved,  by  maintaining  the  integrity  of  the  will  in  both 
its  aspects.  His  will  is  free,  because  its  freedom  is 
essential  to  that  independence  which  is  the  mark  of 
manhood.  Yet  at  the  same  time  it  is  bound  by  a  law 
which  is  also  essential  to  his  definition  of  a  man;  for 
there  is  not,  and  by  this  definition  never  has  been,  a 
race  of  men  without  a  higher  law  than  that  of  mere  self- 
preservation.     Below  that  line  we  place  by   common 


92  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

consent  the  world  of  animals.  When  that  line  is  passed, 
and  not  till  then,  we  may  properly  use  the  name  ''man." 
With  the  passing  of  that  line  also  man  came  into  his 
right  as  the  possessor  of  a  will  leading  him  to  acts  for 
which  he  owns  his  responsibility. 

It  has  been  necessary  for  us  to  use  repeatedly  the 
words  "  good  "  and  "  evil "  without  trying  to  give  them 
any  precise  definition.  Yet  the  conception  which  must 
underlie  any  such  definition  is  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant elements  in  all  Unitarian  thought.  Here  again 
one  is  forced  by  the  facts  of  the  case  into  a  negative 
way  of  putting  it.  Throughout  the  earlier  theologies 
there  runs  the  notion  of  good  and  evil  as  entities  in  them- 
selves. Especially  was  this  the  case  with  the  idea  of 
evil.  If,  as  always  predicated,  God  was  essentially  good, 
then  in  order  to  account  for  the  presence  of  evil  in  the 
world  there  must  be  over  against  him  a  something  else, 
antagonistic  to  him  and  working  throughout  nature  and 
life  in  continual  opposition  to  him.  Christian  theology 
was  profoundly  influenced  by  the  fundamental  dualism 
prevailing  in  many  forms  in  religions  with  which  it  came 
into  contact.  It  was,  perhaps,  more  keenly  alive  to 
the  dangers  arising  from  this  source  than  to  any  others. 
It  did  its  best  to  get  rid  of  every  trace  of  dualism  in  its 
confessions  of  faith.  It  rejected  with  horror  the  notion 
of  an  eternal  principle  of  evil  all  but  equal  with  God, 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  93 

which  continually  threatened  its  own  doctrine  of  the 
divine  unity.  The  word  "Manichean,"  which,  under 
its  many  forms,  stood  for  dualistic  ideas  whenever  and 
wherever  they  appeared,  was  one  of  its  favorite  words 
of  reproach.  Its  greatest  teacher,  Augustine  the  Afri- 
can, who  from  being  a  follower  of  the  Graeco-Roman 
divinities  had  found  his  way  into  orthodox  Christianity 
through  the  gateway  of  Manicheism,  spent  a  lifetime 
in  fighting  that  duahsm  which  had,  after  all,  been  to 
him  a  training  school  for  Christian  philosophy.  He  and 
his  successors  through  the  centuries  did  their  best;  but 
when  all  was  done  the  fact  remained  that  a  dualistic 
shading  had  been  given  to  Christian  thought  from 
which  it  never  quite  recovered.  All  its  protestations 
could  not  do  away  with  the  notion  of  a  real  principle 
of  evil,  generally  embodied  in  a  personal  figure,  but  in 
any  case  a  reality.  The  Catholic  Church  retained  the 
idea,  in  spite  of  its  broadly  human  interpretations  of  it, 
and  in  the  great  Protestant  revivals  of  every  age  these 
figures  of  an  evil  one  as  the  author  and  maintainer  of 
sin  became  popular  in  the  extreme. 

Throughout  these  discussions  on  this  most  interest- 
ing because  most  personally  vital  of  all  religious  ques- 
tions, we  can  trace  a  continuous  protest  against  the 
reality  of  evil;  but  an  idea  which  requires  so  much 
protesting  is  sure  to  be  an  idea  with  a  pretty  vigorous 


94  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

life  in  it.  In  spite  of  the  protests  of  theologians  the 
personal  devil  as  the  embodiment  of  the  reality  of  evil 
held  his  own.  Whether  he  were  an  object  of  dread  or 
of  derision  or  of  the  two  together,  the  consciousness  of 
the  Christian  world  was  impressed  with  the  reahty  of 
the  thing  he  represented  as  with  hardly  any  other  idea. 
Unitarianism  begins  its  thought  on  this  subject  by 
squarely  denying  the  reahty  of  evil  —  not,  be  it  well 
understood,  the  fact  of  evil ;  for  to  deny  that  is  simply 
playing  with  words.  By  reahty  is  meant  here,  so  far 
as  plain  language  can  express  it,  what  the  philosophers 
mean  in  their  distinction  between  the  ''real"  and  the 
''ideal," — the  real  being  that  which  has  an  inde- 
pendent existence  of  its  own,  not  merely  an  existence  as 
related  to  something  else.  In  that  sense  of  the  word 
the  Unitarian  asserts  positively  the  relative  nature  of 
evil.  Evil  is  itself  a  negation,  and  a  negation  cannot 
have  real  existence.  "Evil"  is  only  the  opposite  of 
"good."  It  exists  in  the  world  only  as  shadows  exist 
where  the  sunhght  fails  to  reach.  As  the  light  moves, 
the  shadows  vanish  into  the  nothingness  they  really  are. 
Moreover,  as  shadows  are  Hghter  or  heavier  according 
as  the  sun's  rays  approach  them,  so  that  there  is  in 
Nature  no  such  thing  as  a  perfect  shadow,  so  it  is  also 
with  the  evil  of  the  world.  It  lurks  in  every  corner 
because   around   that   corner   the   sun   of   goodness   is 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  95 

shining  clear;  were  there  no  good  there  would  be  no 
evil.  The  depth  of  evil  depends,  like  the  depth  of 
shadows,  upon  the  remoteness  of  the  goodly  sun  and 
upon  the  angle  at  which  it  enters  the  recesses  of  human 
experience.  Some  souls  appear  to  be  all  great  luminous 
fields,  like  the  landscapes  of  a  modern  painter,  filled 
through  and  through  with  an  almost  unearthly  light. 
Some  are  like  a  forest  scene  of  Ruysdael,  where  shadows 
lie  heavy  in  among  rocks  and  trees  and  even  in  the 
sombre  play  of  dashing  water.  The  painter  works 
somewhat  like  the  theologian.  To  produce  his  effects 
he  deals  more  with  his  shadows  than  with  his  lights. 
If  he  can  get  the  shadows  right,  the  lights  will  take 
care  of  themselves.  So  it  has  been  with  theology.  It 
has  emphasized  the  dark  places,  because  these  were 
what  it  could  deal  with  most  readily  and  most  tangibly. 
The  good  that  was  in  the  world  and  in  men  could  do 
without  emphasis  or  definition. 

It  is  precisely  at  this  point  that  Unitarianism  ap- 
proaches the  problem  of  good  and  evil.  It  recognizes 
frankly  the  fact  of  evil,  but  it  changes  the  emphasis 
from  the  dark  side  to  the  bright.  In  so  far  as  it  needs 
a  definition  of  evil  it  seeks  it  through  a  definition  of 
good ;  for  the  negative  can  be  defined  only  through  the 
positive.  Now  Unitarian  thought  finds  its  idea  of  good 
in  that  same  principle  of  harmony  we  have  already  dis- 


96  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

covered  to  be  one  of  its  chief  foundations.  It  frankly 
gives  up  from  the  start  all  attempt  to  define  an  absolute 
Good.  Such  attempts,  useful  enough  to  the  philosopher, 
have  no  place  in  the  practical  search  after  reHgious 
satisfaction.  It  desires  rather  a  definition  of  good  that 
can  be  expressed  in  terms  intelKgible  to  us  plain  strug- 
gling mortals  who  demand  clearness  in  our  thinking  and 
an  uplift  in  our  efforts  towards  a  higher  life. 

''Good"  means  to  the  Unitarian  mind  that  which  is 
in  harmony  with  the  will  of  God.  The  form  of  expres- 
sion does  not  greatly  matter.  Some  would  prefer  to 
say,  ''in  harmony  with  the  law  by  which  the  imiverse 
is  governed,"  because  they  are  afraid  of  using  words 
that  might  be  misunderstood.  The  intention  is  the 
same.  In  any  case  the  definition  needs  some  further 
elaboration  and  especially  as  to  the  question  how  we 
are  to  know  the  good;  for  obviously  it  is  idle  to  lay 
down  an  abstract  conception  if  we  cannot  recognize  it 
in  the  concrete  case. 

"Good,"  then,  is  certainly  not  that  which  happens 
to  please  us.  Probably  no  definition  of  good  has  ever 
been  more  natural  or  more  popular  than  tliis.  If  my 
crops  succeed,  if  my  ambitions  are  realized,  my  friends 
are  true,  my  loves  returned,  and  my  hatreds  avenged, 
then,  says  the  voice  of  common  humanity,  this  is  a  good 
world.     I  live  in  a  smug  contentment  with  myself,  and 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  97 

the  universe  takes  its  natural  and  proper  place  in  my 
thought  as  the  duly  appointed  minister  to  my  happiness. 
If  the  opposite  of  all  these  things  happens,  if  my  strength 
fails,  if  my  enemies  prosper,  and  my  friends  grow  luke- 
warm, —  then  the  world  is  evil  and  I  am  the  victim  of 
a  subtle  fate  which  I  am  and  have  been  powerless  to 
control.  Such  a  view  as  this  springs  naturally  from  a 
notion  of  man  which  places  him  at  the  centre  of  the 
universe  and  the  individual  man  at  the  centre  of  hu- 
manity, so  that  everything  stands  related  to  him  and 
is  to  be  defined  and  interpreted  only  in  this  relation. 
It  is  like  the  ancient  notion  that  our  planet  the  earth, 
simply  because  we  do  it  the  honor  to  live  upon  it, 
must  be  the  center  and  all-sufficient  end  of  creation.  It 
took  many  generations  of  men  to  get  far  enough  away 
from  this  notion  so  that  their  priesthoods  would  refrain 
from  burning  those  who  dared  to  believe  that  our  own 
particular  planet  was  only  one  member  of  a  system,  all 
of  whose  members  were  equally  dependent  upon  one 
central  sun. 

And  so  it  has  been  and  still  is  with  the  notion  of 
good  as  that  which  pleases  the  individual.  It  has 
been  derided  by  philosophers,  condemned  by  theologians, 
combated  by  moralists.  Yet  there  it  is  to-day  one  of 
the  most  natural  instincts  of  the  human  heart.  The 
reason  for  this  is  that  the  elder  theologies  spoiled  their 


98  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

own  eflforts  to  get  rid  of  it  by  failing  to  supply  a  rational 
background  for  their  teaching,  and  it  is  here  that  Uni- 
tarians beHeve  themselves  to  be  in  a  better  position. 
The  notion  of  an  individual  standard  of  good  vanishes 
into  thin  air  the  moment  it  is  brought  into  contact 
with  a  view  of  life  as  governed  by  a  imiversal  law,  just 
as  the  notion  of  a  central  earth,  long  suspected  by 
thinking  men,  vanished  when  it  met  the  theory  of  a 
planetary  system  governed  by  a  universal  law  of  gravi- 
tation. 

This  background  of  universal  law  is  the  very  founda- 
tion of  Unitarian  thought.  It  supplies  at  once  what  is 
needed  to  show  the  weakness  and  the  folly  of  imagining 
that  our  own  personal  standard  of  good  as  advantage 
to  ourselves  is  a  sound  guide.  It  gives  us  a  measure  of 
its  pettiness,  its  unsteadiness,  and  its  insufficiency.  It 
enables  us  to  grasp  the  higher  loyalty  that  holds  us  to 
great  things  and  sets  us  free  from  the  tyranny  of  little 
things.  It  compels  us,  once  for  all,  to  drop  the 
struggle  for  small  satisfactions,  —  the  keeping  of  our 
bodies  warm  and  cool,  fed  and  rested,  the  saving  of  our 
minds  from  grave  responsibihties,  the  evasion  of  high 
demands  upon  our  sacrifice  and  our  charity.  It  shows 
us  that  all  these  forms  of  self-satisfaction  are  good  only 
in  so  far  as  they  fit  us  better  for  the  greater  stress  of 
life.     The  question   as   to   what   is  pleasing  to  us  is 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  99 

lost  in  the  larger  question  whether  we  ourselves  are 
pleasing  in  the  sight  of  Him  who  is  our  law,  of  that 
Law  which  is  our  highest  standard,  the  rule  and  meas- 
ure of  our  experience. 

But  if  we  may  not  measure  goodness  by  the  standard 
of  our  own  personal  consciousness,  our  next  impulse  as 
social  beings  would  be  to  seek  a  standard  in  the  society 
to  which  we  belong.  May  there  not  be  some  criterion 
of  good  in  its  experience  as  a  whole?  Certainly  we 
should  be  moving  here  upon  a  road  that  would  lead  to 
nobler  ideas.  Something  of  personal  pettiness  would  be 
gone,  and  we  should  be  breathing  a  higher  air.  We 
may  well  say  that  in  the  law  of  the  state,  for  example, 
we  have  a  collective  expression  of  the  things  most 
desirable  for  the  community  as  a  whole.  Whatever 
conforms  to  this  public  law  must  then  be  *'good,"  so 
far  at  least  as  that  community  is  concerned.  So  in  the 
decrees  of  the  Church  we  have  a  record  of  the  common 
agreement  of  men  on  what  it  is  best  to  do  and  think 
within  the  range  of  faith  and  morals.  May  we  not  say 
here  also  that  whatever  the  Church  decrees  for  its 
members  must  represent  to  them  the  highest  good? 
So,  also,  apart  from  these  organisations,  human  society 
cries  out  to  us  with  varied  voices  of  appeal  or  of  reproof. 
It  begs  us  to  relieve  its  poverty,  to  break  its  oppres- 
sions, to  enlighten  its  ignorance,  to  comfort  its  distress, 


lOO  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

to  widen  the  bounds  of  its  liberty.  Are  not  these  the 
measures  of  the  highest  good? 

There  is  much  in  all  these  forms  of  collective  demand 
to  make  men  content  with  the  ideals  of  good  which  they 
suggest.  If  we  faithfully  obey  the  laws  of  the  state, 
respect  the  teaching  of  the  Church,  and  lend  a  ready 
ear  to  the  calls  of  human  need,  why  are  we  not  con- 
forming to  the  highest  standards  of  goodness?  The 
answer  Hes,  as  in  the  case  of  the  individual,  in  the  shift- 
ing motive  of  the  standards  here  presented.  They  may 
be  right  in  the  given  case  or  they  may  be  wrong.  The 
law  of  the  state  has  as  often  served  the  cause  of  bru- 
tality and  oppression  as  it  has  maintained  justice  and 
furthered  liberty.  The  social  teachings  of  religion  have 
as  often  helped  to  keep  men  in  darkness  as  they  have 
opened  to  them  the  ways  of  light.  The  inarticulate 
cries  of  the  multitude  have  led  into  fantastic  excesses  as 
often  as  they  have  pointed  the  way  to  real  and  permanent 
service. 

^'Good''  is  neither  that  which  seems  most  agreeable 
to  the  individual  nor  is  it  that  which  conforms  to  the 
standards  of  social  demand.  Where  then  shall  we  find 
its  definition?  We  have  already  declared  our  inabiHty 
to  grasp  the  idea  of  the  Absolute  Good.  If  we  knew 
that,  we  should  be  gods,  not  men.  Indeed,  wherever  in 
these  reflections  we  come  to  the  notion  of  the  Absolute, 


'      THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  lOl 

we  shall  frankly  confess  our  limitation  and  withdraw 
into  the  region  of  the  humanly  possible.  The  Unitarian 
can  go  no  farther  than  the  definition  with  which  we 
began:  ^'That  is  good  which  is  in  harmony  with  the  uni- 
versal law."  But  how  is  this  definition  to  be  appHed? 
Certainly  we  do  not  know  the  universal  law,  and  how 
then  are  we  to  know  whether  the  given  thought,  feeling, 
action,  is  in  harmony  with  it. 

The  Unitarian  answer  to  this  is :  we  know  in  the 
given  case  whether  the  thing  that  seems  good  is  really 
so  through  the  certain  witness  of  the  enlightened  indi- 
vidual conscience,  and  in  no  other  way.  At  first  this 
may  seem  to  contradict  what  we  have  said  as  to  the 
insufficiency  of  the  individual  standard  of  goodness; 
but  the  contradiction  is  only  apparent.  In  what  was 
said  before  we  were  speaking  only  of  what  appealed  to 
our  sense  of  personal  comfort,  convenience,  pleasure,  or 
even,  in  some  lower  sense  of  that  great  word,  to  our 
^'happiness."  Now  we  are  not  referring  to  that  kind 
of  satisfaction  at  all.  We  are  in  another  region  of 
spiritual  experience.  On  that  lower  stage  the  individual 
appears  as  isolated  from  all  other  forms  of  being.  He 
is  his  own  sufficient  end  and  aim.  He  is  in  a  kind  of 
antagonism  or  rivalry  with  every  one  and  everything. 
If  he  is  warm,  it  matters  not  to  him  that  others  are 
cold.     If  he  have  power,  it  is  a  small  thing  that  hun- 


I02  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

dreds  are  compelled  to  serve  him  in  slavery  or  in  soul- 
destroying  labor.  If  his  desire  is  sated,  it  cannot 
matter  that  women's  hearts  are  broken  and  children 
brought  into  misery.  His  "good"  is  others'  pain. 
That  kind  of  individual  standard  is  mere  egoism,  and 
we  are  all  united  in  condemning  it. 

But  there  is  a  higher  individualism,  free  throughout 
from  this  reproach.  The  individual  can  discern  real 
good  only  as  he  brings  himself  into  right  relation  with 
everything  else,  and  the  medium  through  which  he  sees 
this  relation  is  what  we  have  called  his  enlightened 
conscience.  As  to  a  definition  of  conscience  there  would 
not,  probably,  be  any  very  great  difference  among 
reasonable  men.  Conscience  is  that  inner  witness 
which  testifies  to  the  Tightness  or  the  wrongness  of  our 
thoughts  and  our  actions.  It  may  or  it  may  not  be 
possible  to  verify  its  conclusions  by  a  rational  process. 
These  conclusions  may  or  may  not  agree  with  the 
formal  rules  of  our  social  order.  They  may  or  they 
may  not  be  in  accord  with  the  teachings  of  our  Bibles 
and  our  priesthoods.  Fortunate,  indeed,  the  man  ap- 
pears to  be  whose  conscience  runs  in  pleasant  harmony 
with  these  easily  understood  guides  of  life.  He  has 
only  to  work  his  syllogisms,  to  consult  his  neighbor,  and 
to  read  his  Bible  judiciously,  to  keep  himself  and  his 
conscience  always  on  excellent  terms. 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  103 

But  if  these  outward  witnesses  fail,  if  reason  will 
not  furnish  a  satisfactory  conclusion,  if  society  frowns, 
if  Scripture  will  not  let  itself  be  twisted  into  conformity 
—  still  conscience  stands  unshaken.  The  individual 
may  suffer;  he  may  cry  out  in  his  pain,  ^'If  only  I 
might  see  a  way  out  of  my  distress  !  if  only  others 
would  support  me  !  if  only  the  recorded  wisdom  of  the 
Past  would  come  to  my  aid  !"  but  so  long  as  that  does 
not  happen,  conscience  must  still  remain  supreme  lord 
of  his  being.  He  can  only  say:  ''I  cannot  do  other- 
wise.    God  help  me!"   and  take  the  consequences. 

That  is  conscience  as,  probably,  most  fair-minded 
men  would  define  it.  But  no  sooner  have  we  reached 
this  definition  than  we  begin  to  feel  how  much  it  needs 
examination.  After  all,  is  this  imperious  master  of  our 
destiny  so  utterly  to  be  trusted?  Is  its  standard  an 
absolute  one,  so  that  whatever  it  tells  us  at  any  mo- 
ment, we  may  be  sure  that  is  '^good"  and  its  opposite 
is  "evil"?  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  if  conscience  may 
change,  what  may  properly  be  the  influences  that  may 
produce  such  change  ?  The  answer  to  this  inevitable 
puzzle  is  found  in  the  phrase,  "the  enlightened  con- 
science." Some  might  prefer  to  say  the  "educated" 
or  the  "disciplined"  conscience;  but  these  words  seem 
to  imply  some  conscious  training  of  the  conscience  in  a 
specific  direction,  and  that  is  an  implication  we  ought 


I04  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

especially  to  avoid.  By  the  ''enlightened"  conscience 
we  mean  one  that,  while  it  yields  nothing  of  its  lordship 
over  the  individual  life,  is  yet  open  to  every  worthy 
suggestion  from  without.  Each  such  influence  it  must 
try  before  the  tribunal  of  its  own  best  judgment, 
whether  it  be  of  good  or  of  evil.  Then,  if  it  be  approved, 
it  will  enter  into  the  very  substance  of  conscience  itself, 
modifying  its  standards,  but  making  them  no  less  im- 
perative. The  enlightened  conscience  seeks  light  every- 
where and  responds  to  it  as  all  brightness  reflects  the 
light. 

The  enlightenment  of  the  conscience  defends  it,  in 
the  first  place,  from  itself.  Every  one  knows  the  type 
of  person  we  call  ''too  conscientious."  Properly  speak- 
ing, that  is  a  false  term.  No  one  can  be  too  conscien- 
tious in  the  sense  of  following  conscience  too  strictly. 
The  fault  in  these  cases  is  not  in  the  following  but  in 
the  conscience  itself.  It  has  become  warped  or  it  has 
been  terrorized  or  deceived.  The  conscience  may  prey 
upon  itself,  shutting  itself  away  from  every  influence 
and  driving  its  victim  around  in  a  vicious  circle  of  ideas 
from  which  he  would,  but  cannot,  extricate  himself. 
Such  a  conscience  may  well  be  called  rather  puzzled 
than  enlightened.  It  is  keen,  but  it  cuts  in  wrong  direc- 
tions. A  man  under  its  influence  imagines  himself  to 
be  "consistent"  and  prides  himself  upon  this.     He  has 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN 


105 


long  since  laid  down  some  rule  of  action,  which  at  the 
moment  he  believed  right,  and  from  this  rule  he  will 
not  depart  —  he  will  not  touch  alcohol,  he  will  sleep 
only  so  many  hours  in  the  day,  he  will  set  apart  so 
much  of  his  income  for  charity,  he  will  not  accept  a 
gift  from  a  friend,  lest  he  incur  an  obligation  he  cannot 
pay.  These  things  once  seemed  to  him  supremely  im- 
portant and  so  he  will  still  observe  them.  He  over- 
looked the  certainty  of  growth  in  himself,  and  of  change 
in  all  his  surroundings,  and  now,  when  he  has  grown 
and  things  about  him  have  changed,  and  he  sees  with 
the  best  part  of  him  that  these  obligations  are  fictitious, 
still  he  will  not  shake  them  off.  He  shuts  out  the  light 
of  experience  and  reason  and  keeps  on  in  the  shadows 
of  what  he  and  others  call  his  conscience,  doing  weak 
and  foolish  things  and  all  the  while  growing  less  capable 
of  making  useful  distinctions  of  motive.  The  enhghten- 
ment  of  the  conscience  defends  it  thus  from  itself. 
Without  it  the  conscience  may  prey  upon  itself  and  so 
become  really  ineffective. 

Again,  as  enlightenment  protects  a  man  against  what 
seems  a  too  keen  sense  of  conscience,  so,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  defends  him  against  its  fatal  dulness.  Every 
honest  man  must  confess  to  moments  when,  having  long 
striven  to  uphold  the  standard  of  right  living,  he  feels 
a  doubt  whether,  after  all,  it  is  worth  while.     The  doubt 


lo6  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

admitted  grows  into  a  habit;  conscience,  that  had 
guided  him  safely  so  far,  ceases  to  admonish  him,  and 
he  moves  towards  a  catastrophe.  Such  wreck  of  con- 
science could  be  averted  if  the  man  were  able  to  see  in 
time  that  conscience  was  only  another  expression  of  the 
highest  reasonableness.  He  has  let  it  go  because  it 
seemed  to  him  to  contradict  those  other  teachings  of 
experience  and  of  reason  which  have  come  to  mean 
more  to  him.  If  he  had  been  able  to  set  his  conscience 
in  the  light  of  all  that  seemed  to  him  best  worth  while 
in  life,  so  that  it  would  have  been  brought  into  har- 
mony with  all  this  instead  of  remaining  in  opposition 
to  it,  then  he  might  have  saved  himself. 

It  will  be  objected  to  these  suggestions  that  they 
point  toward  an  evident  obscuring  of  the  special  func- 
tion of  conscience,  that  they  tend  to  efface  all  distinc- 
tion between  conscience  and  reason.  Following  this 
line  of  thought,  it  will  be  said,  a  man  might  reason  him- 
self into  anything,  so  that  enlightenment  of  the  con- 
science ought  rather  to  be  called  perversion  of  the  con- 
science. There  is  obvious  force  in  these  objections. 
The  tribunal  of  conscience  does  not  act  by  precise 
codes  and  statistics,  for  which  page  and  number  may 
be  quoted.  It  gives  its  decisions  according  to  a  larger 
equity,  which  does  not  admit  of  precise  definition  in 
advance,  and  the  work  of  equity  is  obviously  more  diffi- 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  1 07 

cult  than  that  of  formal  law.  It  is  true  that  the  en- 
lightenment of  the  conscience  is  often  dangerous,  but 
so  is  every  other  struggle  of  human  nature  that  is  worth 
while. 

It  is  because  of  the  Unitarian's  faith  in  the  capacities 
of  human  nature  that  he  is  willing  to  take  the  risk  of 
committing  himself  to  the  guidance  of  the  enHghtened 
conscience  in  his  effort  to  distinguish  the  highest  good. 
He  knows  that  in  the  process  there  are  likely  to  be 
moments  when  the  conscience  will  be  puzzled  into  con- 
fusion and  other  moments  when  it  will  be  in  danger  of 
perversion,  but  he  believes  that  on  the  whole  the  honest 
struggle  for  a  true  enlightenment  will  be  successful. 
He  does  not  think  of  this  struggle  as  a  misfortune.  He 
sees  in  it  the  inevitable  law  of  all  being,  the  condition 
of  progress  and  the  discipline  of  all  a  man's  powers. 
To  state  it  once  more,  the  Unitarian  believes  that  to  be 
good  which  is  in  harmony  with  the  eternal  law  of  the 
universe,  and  he  believes  that  this  harmony  can  be 
discerned  by  the  safe  witness  of  the  enlightened  con- 
science and  in  no  other  way.  He  does  not  imagine  that 
by  this  process  a  system  of  rules  could  be  evolved  which 
the  untrained  will  could  follow.  Rather,  he  beheves 
that  from  moment  to  moment  the  disciplined  conscience 
discovers  its  way,  and  this  often  the  most  surely  when 
it  can  give  least  accurate  account  of  its  own  processes. 


lo8  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

The  ultimate  verdict  of  the  soul  so  guided  must  always 
be,  ^'I  know  this  to  be  good  because,  being  the  thing  I 
am,  I  cannot  see  it  otherwise.  It  is  good  to  me  because 
I  am  myself." 

Man  remains  thus,  to  the  Unitarian,  a  being,  all  of 
whose  manifold  capacities  are  normally  planned  to 
work  together  in  harmony  with  each  other  and  with  the 
universe  of  law  in  which  he  is  a  part.  We  may  not 
without  peril  try  to  separ?  te  between  body,  mind,  heart, 
and  soul  in  making  our  image  of  man  as  a  religious 
being.  This  conception  of  man  enables  the  Unitarian 
to  face  with  entire  calmness  and  certainty  of  ultimate 
satisfaction  all  the  efforts  of  a  true  science  to  point  out 
the  place  of  man  in  the  scheme  of  things.  Whatever 
proves  to  be  true,  that  we  need  not  fear,  and  the  only 
way  to  reach  truth  is  to  try.  Man  is,  furthermore,  a 
creature  with  a  will  of  his  very  own,  —  none  the  less 
his  own  because  it  is  hmited  by  the  greater  law  about 
him.  In  adjusting  his  will  to  the  higher  will  of  God 
he  finds  the  supreme  challenge  of  his  moral  nature  to 
that  action  which  is  the  chief  glory  of  his  manhood. 
Finally,  to  guide  his  will  in  action,  he  rehes  upon  the 
ultimate  authority  of  that  enhghtened  conscience  in 
which  he  finds  the  highest  certificate  of  his  value  as  a 
co-worker  in  the  business  of  the  universe.  The  Uni- 
tarian believes  that  a  being  so  constructed  must  neces- 


THE  NATURE  OF  MAN  1 09 

sarily  become  a  religious  being,  and  his  concern  is  to 
define  as  well  as  he  can  the  reHgion  that  best  conforms 
to  this  idea  of  human  nature.  ReHgion  thus  seems  to 
him  not  something  imposed  upon  man  from  the  out- 
side, but  something  developed  from  within,  the  natural 
and  inevitable  expression  of  man's  nature.  Only  so 
can  it  have  for  him  either  interest  or  value. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   BIBLE 

One  accent  of  the  Holy  Ghost 
The  heedless  world  hath  never  lost. 

—  R.  W.  Emerson. 

It  would  be  hard  to  describe  the  thought  of  Uni- 
tarians about  the  Bible  in  language  essentially  different 
from  that  which  would  be  employed  to-day  by  the 
more  intelligent  members  of  other  Christian  bodies. 
What  were,  a  generation  ago,  rather  startling  proposi- 
tions as  to  the  nature  and  origin  of  the  writings  con- 
tained in  the  two  canons  have  now  become  the  com- 
monplaces of  all  freely  thinking  men.  In  stating, 
therefore,  the  Unitarian  position  on  this  subject  one 
must  include  much  that  is  not  by  any  means  peculiar 
to  it.  So  far  as  these  matters  are  concerned,  Uni- 
tarians rejoice  to  find  so  wide  agreement  with  their 
views,  and  can  claim  for  themselves  only  a  more  fearless 
and  consistent  application  of  them.  Beyond  the  range 
of  this  common  view,  however,  they  think  they  see  and 
feel  certain  wider  horizons  which  it  is  the  object  of  the 
present  chapter  to  suggest. 

The  Unitarian  sees  in  the  Bible  two  collections  of 


THE  BIBLE  ill 

writings  having  with  each  other  mainly  this  connection : 
that  the  writers  of  the  second,  being  Hebrews,  referred 
back  naturally  and  frequently  to  the  first.  In  that 
first  collection  was  contained  the  literary  expression  of 
the  national  and  reHgious  Hfe  of  the  Hebrew  people. 
It  gave  them  their  history,  their  poetry,  and  their  law. 
The  writings  it  comprised  were  the  survival,  by  a  law 
of  the  fittest,  from  centuries  of  literary  activity.  They 
had  inspired  the  patriotism,  the  unity,  the  persistence, 
the  genius,  of  the  race.  They  had  entered  into  its  con- 
sciousness as,  probably,  the  Hterature  of  no  other  race 
has  done  —  unless  it  be,  perhaps,  that  of  the  related 
Semitic  Arabs.  In  the  absence  of  the  plastic  arts  they 
had  satisfied  their  aesthetic  sense  upon  its  splendid 
imagery  and  nourished  their  energy  of  the  day  by  con- 
tinual draughts  from  its  store  of  great  examples  in  their 
national  past.  It  was  impossible  for  the  Hebrew,  when 
he  desired  to  express  himself  on  the  great  questions  of 
rehgion  or  of  racial  hope,  not  to  draw  his  language 
from  this  inexhaustible  storehouse  of  material  familiar  to 
every  listener. 

That  is  reason  enough  for  the  countless  references  in 
the  New  Testament  to  the  great  classic  collection  of 
the  Old.  That  and  the  common  racial  temperament 
are  sufficient  also  to  account  for  the  obvious  similarity 
in   tone  between   the  two   collections.     But  when   this 


112  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

has  been  said,  pretty  much  all  has  been  said  that  can 
be  brought  forward  for  the  unity  of  the  two.  Our 
editions  of  the  Bible  have  so  accustomed  us  to  the  im- 
pression of  unity  that  it  costs  us  a  considerable  effort 
to  shake  it  off.  We  know  with  our  intelligence  that 
Moses  cannot  have  written  the  account  of  his  own 
death,  and  yet  we  can  never  quite  escape  the  deadening 
effect  of  those  fatal  editorial  headlines  to  our  translation, 
in  which  the  Old  Testament  writers  are  made  to  refer  to 
the  events  and  persons  of  the  New.  It  is  as  if  a  spell 
had  been  cast  upon  us  from  which  we  were  even  yet 
imable  to  awake.  Jesus,  the  Apostles,  the  Church,  are 
made,  in  this  vague,  uncertain  light,  to  appear  as  char- 
acters in  the  drama  of  Hebrew  race  development,  rather 
than  as  factors  in  a  new  and  upward  movement  of 
humanity.  When  Isaiah,  in  a  moment  of  prophetic  exal- 
tation, breaks  out  into  the  language  of  confident  predic- 
tion of  a  great  personal  leadership  for  Israel,  we  imagine 
him  to  have  seen  a  vision  of  the  cradle  at  Bethlehem. 
In  the  light  of  later  events  every  available  word  and 
phrase  of  the  ancient  hterature  has  been  tortured  out 
of  its  proper  meaning  and  made  to  appear  as  a  definite 
prediction. 

It  has  been  almost  in  vain  that  scholars  of  every 
creed  and  of  no  creed  have  shown  the  futility  of  such 
imaginings.     The  common  consciousness  of  Christendom 


THE   BIBLE  1 13 

still  siiffers  from  this  unhistorical  way  of  approaching 
historical  fact.  It  is  still  necessary  to  remove  this  first 
fundamental  obstacle  before  we  can  go  on  to  any  rational 
consideration  of  the  Bible  as  a  whole.  One  is  tempted 
sometimes  to  regret  that  this  body  of  literature  was 
ever  presented  to  the  world  as  a  unit,  and  certainly  all 
praise  is  to  be  given  to  those  who  in  their  several  ways 
have  contributed  to  a  juster  method  of  approach  to  it. 
The  abolition  of  artificial  and  arbitrary  paragraphs  and 
chapters,  the  separation  of  the  Old  from  the  New 
Testament,  the  pubHcation  of  the  various  books  in 
separate  volumes,  the  endless  critical  examinations  into 
the  probable  age  of  every  writing  and  the  probable 
process  of  its  composition,  —  all  these  are  welcome,  and 
they  have  had  their  effect.  Yet  one  has  only  to  listen 
to  the  conversation  of  the  plain  man  on  this  subject  to 
learn  how  small  on  the  whole  the  result  has  been.  It  is 
true  that  in  some  minds  the  old  faith  in  the  authority 
of  the  Bible  has  been  utterly  destroyed,  while  in  others 
it  has  remained  practically  unchanged.  Either  way  the 
old  impression  of  unity  has  remained.  One  set  of  persons 
has  said:  ''If  parts  of  the  Bible  are  wrong,  then  the 
whole  is  gone."  Another  set  have  said:  "All  this  babble 
of  the  critics  is  an  idle  waste  of  energy ;  the  Bible  stands 
where  it  always  stood,  as  the  guide  and  the  light  of  men." 
In  both  cases  men  are  still  thinking  of  it  as  one  thing, 
I 


114  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

and  this  cannot  be  forgotten  in  any  intelligent  discus- 
sion of  the  subject.  The  Bible  is  still  here  as  a  factor 
in  the  thought  and  practice  of  Christians.  It  is  not 
going  to  be  resolved  into  its  elements  and  disappear  in 
the  maze  of  critical  controversy.  Indeed  the  function 
of  all  criticism  is  to  make  literature  more  intelligible, 
and  the  criticism  of  the  Bible  is  no  exception. 

Unitarians  are  and  have  generally  been  in  fullest 
sympathy  with  all  these  modern  attempts  to  place  the 
bibhcal  writings  before  the  world  as  they  were  meant 
to  be  placed,  each  in  its  own  proper  order  of  time  and 
of  composition  and  each  translated  so  as  to  give  the 
meaning  which  its  author,  ignorant  as  we  all  are  of  the 
future,  intended  to  give  it.  So  presented,  they  find  in 
them  a  principle  of  unity  far  higher  and  more  impres- 
sive than  any  artificial  principle  could  be.  They  think 
of  the  Old  Testament  as  the  record  of  the  Hfe  of  a  people 
inspired,  as  no  other  people  within  the  range  of  our 
vision  has  been,  by  the  genius  of  rehgion.  They  value 
this  record  because,  coming  out  of  the  rehgious  con- 
sciousness of  one  race,  it  may  serve  the  highest  purpose 
in  rousing  and  maintaining  the  same  rehgious  conscious- 
ness in  other  races.  As  the  Hebrew,  fighting  his  way 
to  national  recognition  in  the  midst  of  warring  peoples, 
found  his  rallying  point  in  the  worship  of  Jehovah,  so 
our  own  nation  in  its  struggles  for  national  unity  and  its 


THE  BIBLE 


115 


highest  expression  in  righteousness  of  life,  may  draw 
hope  and  courage  from  loyalty  to  a  divine  ideal. 

It  is  not  a  question  of  accepting  or  rejecting  every 
detail  of  Hebrew  theology  or  Hebrew  morality.  We 
may  use  and  reverence  the  Old  Testament  without  ac- 
cepting the  ancient  notion  of  a  God  made  in  the  like- 
ness of  an  earthly  ruler.  We  may  admire  heroism  and 
devotion,  justice  and  mercy,  without  accepting  the  pro- 
visions of  the  Levitical  Law.  We  may  share  the  rapture 
of  the  Psalmist  and  yet  not  admire  David  as  an  example 
of  decent  living.  Still  less  are  we  concerned  with  ques- 
tions of  historical  accuracy.  We  may  know  for  certain 
that  this  fact  or  series  of  facts  is  presented  wholly  out 
of  historical  sequence.  This  is  nothing  more  than  what 
happens  constantly  with  the  material  of  any  other 
record.  We  do  not,  on  this  account,  reject  the  record 
as  unhistorical ;  we  only  try  to  straighten  it  out  and  to 
understand  it  in  its  proper  shape.  Then,  when  this  is 
done,  and  not  until  then,  the  record  becomes  valuable 
for  the  education  of  humanity.  So  it  is  with  that  won- 
derful collection  of  history,  poetry,  and  law  we  are  here 
deahng  with. 

Unitarians  have  no  fear  of  the  critical  process,  because 
they  try  to  distinguish  between  the  essential  and  the 
non-essential.  ^'Criticism,"  which  is  nothing  more 
than  careful  and  intelHgent  examination,  deals  with  the 


Ii6  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

detail  of  language,  history,  usages,  beliefs  of  the  people 
whose  record  it  studies.  When  its  work  is  done,  —  if  it 
ever  could  be  done,  —  there  remains  the  really  im- 
portant thing,  the  picture  of  the  people's  activity  and 
of  its  highest  thought.  Criticism  is  useful  only  as  it 
helps  to  make  the  picture  more  accurate,  to  explain 
and  justify  the  process  of  the  thought. 

So  far  Unitarians  go  alongside  of  all  others  who  in 
these  days  of  science  have  been  trying  to  make  the 
Bible  more  useful  to  the  world  in  which  we  live.  They 
accept  the  results  of  scholarship  with  cheerful  confidence, 
because  they  believe  scholars  to  be  on  the  whole  serious 
and  right-minded  persons  who  are  seeking  for  truth  by 
methods  of  their  own  and  because  they  are  quite  sure 
that  truth  is  one  and  must  prevail.  Again,  we  must 
emphasize  the  Unitarian  principle,  that  no  truth  can 
really  contradict  another  truth,  and  that  therefore  the 
only  safe  attitude  towards  all  serious  pursuit  of  truth 
is  the  attitude  of  encouragement  and  hopefulness.  We 
are  not  concerned  here  with  hasty  or  ill-considered  or 
partisan  or  flippant  judgments  masquerading  imder  the 
mask  of  scholarship.  Like  all  other  shams,  these  will 
meet  their  natural  fate  in  the  long  account.  We  can 
deal  here  only  with  honest  work  by  honest  men,  and  in 
valuing  honesty  Unitarians  can  hardly  flatter  them- 
selves that  they  differ  greatly,  at  least  in  intention,  from 


THE   BIBLE  117 

other  men.  Wherein,  then,  is  the  Unitarian  position 
in  regard  to  the  Bible  peculiar  ?  What  advantage  have 
Unitarians  over  others  in  their  approach  to  this  ques- 
tion? 

The  first  advantage  they  can  properly  claim  is  that 
to  them  the  books  of  the  Bible,  no  matter  what  their 
character,  prophecy,  legend,  law,  poetry,  history,  or 
what  not,  are  the  work  of  human  beings.  Their  faith 
on  this  point  is  part  of  their  general  conviction  as  to 
human  nature.  They  beHeve  men  to  be  capable  of 
producing  the  best  there  is  in  this  body  of  literature, 
and  they  are  sure  that  none  but  men  could  have  pro- 
duced the  worst.  To  put  it  in  more  conventional 
language,  their  views  about  Revelation  and  Inspiration 
differ  radically  from  those  which  have  been  traditional 
in  the  Church.  Unitarians  like  these  words.  They 
would  be  glad  to  keep  them;  but  they  would  a  thou- 
sand times  rather  give  them  up  altogether  than  let  it 
be  supposed  for  a  moment  that  they  accept  them  in 
their  conventional  meanings.  Here  again  Unitarians 
find  themselves  in  line  with  certain  recognizable  ten- 
dencies from  the  earhest  ages  of  the  Church.  The 
definitions  of  revelation  and  inspiration  have  always 
varied  widely  with  times  and  with  individuals.  On  the 
one  hand  there  have  been  those  who  have  thought  of 
revelation  as  a  process  by  which  truth,  so  far  as  it  con- 


Il8  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

cerned  the  highest  things,  came  to  men  quite  apart  from 
their  ordinary  ways  of  reaching  it.  Ordinarily  we  study 
and  experiment;  we  think  and  draw  conclusions,  and 
when  we  come  to  a  stopping  place  we  say  we  have  dis- 
covered some  fragment  of  a  truth.  It  is  a  laborious 
method,  not  dramatic  or  picturesque.  It  seems  to  be  a 
part  of  our  "fallen"  nature  that  we  should  have  to 
struggle  and  stumble  along  in  this  painful  fashion  only 
at  last  to  know  that  we  have  attained  only  to  an  im- 
perfect insight,  have  grasped  only  half  truths,  have 
caught  only  passing  glimpses  of  the  full  vision  that 
seems  somehow  to  belong  to  us  by  right.  It  is  no 
wonder  that  men  have  been  impatient  of  such  slow 
progress  and  have  turned  with  relief  to  the  thought  of 
another  and  more  flattering  method.  The  plodding 
must  indeed  go  on;  that  is  a  part  of  our  human  dis- 
cipline, but  that  is  not  all.  From  time  to  time  God, 
in  his  mercy,  intervenes  and  conveys  to  men  directly, 
without  the  mediation  of  their  own  powers,  such  por- 
tions of  truth  as  it  seems  best  to  Him  to  give.  The  men 
through  whom  this  truth  comes  are  ''mediums"  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  They  do  not  discover  truth  by  any  effort 
of  their  own.  It  comes  to  them  without  their  seeking. 
It  is  independent  of  their  preparation,  spiritual  or 
mental.  They  are  not  the  product  of  their  time;  they 
are  picked  out  from  among  the  ranks  of  men  by  a  direct 


THE  BIBLE  1 19 

choice  of  God,  and  their  utterances  are  not  their  own, 
but  are  in  very  truth  the  voice  of  God  himself.  Revela- 
tion thus  differs  from  every  other  means  by  which  the 
highest  truth  is  conveyed  to  men  in  being  a  direct  message 
carrying  an  authority  above  all  human  sanction. 

That  is  one  view  of  revelation.  Parallel  with  it  has 
been  moving,  however,  another,  equally  well-defined, 
but  requiring  a  somewhat  more  ample  consideration. 
According  to  this  other  view,  religious  truth,  like  all 
other  truth,  comes  to  men  through  the  natural  develop- 
ment of  their  own  powers.  Like  everything  else  worth 
having,  it  must  be  bought  and  paid  for.  The  struggle 
for  truth,  like  the  struggle  for  virtue,  is  a  part  of  our 
human  inheritance.  It  is  not  a  penalty  for  anything, 
except  for  being  men.  It  is  the  struggle  that  makes 
the  truth  valuable.  It  would  be  as  mean  to  ask  for 
truth  without  work,  as  it  is  to  ask  for  ''salvation"  as 
the  free  gift  of  any  one.  Nor  is  the  struggle  to  be 
thought  of  as  merely  painful,  discouraging,  depressing. 
On  the  contrary,  it  has  the  joy  that  always  comes  with 
the  conflict  of  good  against  evil.  Sometimes  it  brings 
the  fierce  joy  of  battle,  when  the  forces  of  light  are 
clearly  arrayed  against  those  of  darkness,  and  blows  ring 
on  the  armor  of  superstition  and  formahsm.  Sometimes 
it  is  the  gentler  joy  of  patient  labor,  when  the  mind, 
groping  for  a  while  in  uncertainty,  works  its  way  out 


I20  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

through  dimly  Hghted  ways  into  the  full  vision  of  new 
heavens  and  a  new  earth.  But  whatever  may  be  its 
nature,  the  conflict  is  worth  all  it  costs.  It  is  only 
through  struggle  that  men's  powers  are  quickened.  If 
they  are  not  used  they  fail  and  die,  and  men  sink  back 
into  a  dull  acceptance  of  whatever  some  authority, 
clothed  in  the  respectable  garments  of  tradition,  may 
offer  them.  But  if  they  are  used,  every  man  for  him- 
self trying  to  gain  the  measure  of  truth  of  which  he  is 
capable,  then  these  powers  grow  more  acute.  Men 
come  to  see  more  and  more  clearly  into  the  realities  of 
thought  and  life.  Truth  won  in  this  way  at  the  cost 
of  serious  individual  effort  has  a  value  that  no  merely 
accepted  ideas  can  ever  have.  It  enters,  vitally  and 
productively,  into  the  hves  of  men.  It  moves  ever 
forward  and  not  back.  It  leads  men  on  to  new  adjust- 
ments of  their  former  thought.  It  helps  them  to  under- 
stand and  to  value  the  discoveries  of  other  men  and  to 
judge  them,  whether  they  be  really  new  fragments  of 
the  universal  truth  or  no. 

Not  only,  therefore,  are  Unitarians  not  dismayed  by 
the  struggle  after  truth:  they  welcome  it  and  rejoice 
in  it  as  the  only  means  they  can  understand  by  which 
the  highest  truth  is  effectively  carried  to  the  minds  and 
hearts  of  men.  It  is  in  this  process  and  only  thus  that 
they  come  to  a  definition  of  Revelation.    They  see  the 


THE  BIBLE  I2i 

struggle  after  truth  going  on  from  age  to  age,  one  gener- 
ation handing  on  to  the  next  the  results  and  the  ma- 
terials of  its  own  conflict,  and  then  from  point  to  point 
they  find  some  people  or  some  individual  showing,  as  it 
were,  the  ripened  accumulation  of  all  this  effort.  In  the 
utterances  of  this  people  or  of  these  individuals  they 
read  the  gradual  unfolding  of  the  will  of  God,  and  they 
call  that  Revelation.  They  know  well  that  the  process 
is  not  continuous.  It  moves,  not  Hke  some  vast  river 
sweeping  on  in  one  resistless  course  from  the  mountains 
to  the  sea,  but  rather  like  some  desert  stream,  welHng 
up  among  rocky  gorges,  making  its  way  through  burning 
shallows,  now  lost  for  a  space  in  the  engulfing  sands, 
now  rising  again  in  blessed  oases  where  the  people  find 
their  rest  and  refreshment;  again  disappearing,  but 
never  lost  and  never  reaching  an  end  discernible  to  man. 
There  is  no  thought  more  abhorrent  to  the  Unitarian 
than  that  revelation  should  have  been  made  once  for 
all,  to  one  people,  at  one  time,  through  one  channel, 
never  needing  to  be  renewed  or  re-interpreted.  Such  an 
idea  of  revelation  seems  to  him  to  contradict  every 
true  conception  of  deity  and  manhood  alike.  In  this 
matter  he  has  the  deepest  sympathy  with  those  enthu- 
siasts of  the  second  and  third  centuries  who  proclaimed 
a  *'New  Prophecy"  and  justified  themselves  on  the 
groimd  that  all  revelation  needed  to  be  supplemented 


122  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

and  completed  by  new  revelation.  Mankind,  they  said, 
was  able  at  any  given  time  to  receive  only  a  certain 
measure  of  divine  truth  and  therefore  must  be  given 
ever  new  declarations  suited  to  its  new  condition. 
One  sees  that  the  really  deepest  truth  in  the  "New 
Prophecy"  was  this  clear  indication  of  an  ever  advan- 
cing education  of  humanity.  The  Unitarian  takes  this 
truth  and  puts  it  into  other  language.  He  says:  Man- 
kind, endowed  with  power  of  insight  into  the  deepest 
things  of  the  spirit,  may,  nay  must,  cultivate  that 
power.  It  is  his  most  precious  gift,  and  he  would 
be  recreant  to  every  trust  if  he  failed  to  make  the 
most  of  it.  As  he  uses  it,  spiritual  truths  become 
clearer  and  clearer  to  him.  He  does  not  expect  to  attain 
to  the  perfect  vision.  If  he  did,  he  would  cease  to  be 
man,  and  he  is  content  to  remain  what  he  was  made 
to  be,  with  all  its  possibihties  for  higher  development. 
Nor,  again,  does  he  expect  new  truth  in  any  absolute 
sense.  Rather  he  strives  to  find  out  for  himself,  as  a 
man  of  to-day,  Hving  in  the  midst  of  all  to-day's  struggle 
and  all  to-day's  resources,  the  permanent  principles  of 
the  divine  order  and  then,  so  far  as  he  finds  them,  to 
live  by  them. 

These  principles,  wherever  he  can  find  them,  in  book 
or  in  Hfe,  are  the  revelation  of  God.  The  movement  of 
mankind  is  a  process  of  education.     Man  understands 


THE   BIBLE 


123 


to-day  what  he  could  not  understand  some  years  ago, 
because  his  vision  of  the  world  has  become  enlarged. 
In  other  words  he  is  open  now  to  wider  revelations,  and 
he  will  get  them  if  with  all  his  heart  he  truly  seeks 
them  —  not  otherwise.  No  divine  messenger  comes  to 
the  unprepared  or  the  unseeking  mind.  We  must  ask 
to  receive ;  we  must  seek  to  find ;  we  must  knock  — 
hard  —  if  we  expect  to  find  the  doors  of  apprehension 
opening  to  us.  Revelation  means,  then,  to  the  Uni- 
tarian, only  spiritual  comprehension  seen  from  the  other 
side.  Its  essence  is  in  the  ineradicable  human  demand 
for  more  and  ever  more  clearness  in  understanding  the 
relations  of  man  to  the  world  in  which  he  forms  a  part 
and  to  the  divine  source  from  which  he  traces  alike  his 
and  its  descent.  In  answer  to  that  demand  the  knowl- 
edge, the  certainty  he  craves,  comes.  It  comes  always 
and  everywhere  —  only,  it  requires  also  on  the  part  of 
man  a  judgment  as  to  whether  it  be  indeed  the  revela- 
tion of  God.  He  is  not  bound  to  accept  every  pretended 
declaration  of  the  highest  truth  as  if  it  carried  with  it 
a  supreme  authority  —  rather,  he  is  bound  to  test  it  by 
some  standard,  and  in  this  testing  process  we  find  our- 
selves before  one  of  the  most  searching  questions  of  all 
religions. 

By   what   standard   is   an   alleged   revelation    to   be 
judged?     Surely,  again,  by  no  absolute  test.     We  are 


124  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

not  in  possession  of  absolute  measures  of  spiritual 
values.  Whatever  the  standard  may  be,  it  must  have 
its  basis  in  some  human  subject,  individual  or  collective. 
There  have  been  many  answers  to  this  question  within 
the  limits  of  Christianity,  but  they  all  reduce  them- 
selves finally  to  two.  Revelation  is  to  be  judged  and 
measured  either  by  a  recognized  human  authority  or  by 
the  undefinable,  but  none  the  less  clear  and  emphatic, 
witness  of  the  spirit  of  all  truth  in  the  hearts  of  indi- 
vidual men.  The  former  solution  has,  of  course,  been 
that  which  has  chiefly  commended  itself  to  men.  It 
has  appealed  to  them  through  the  eternal  child  that  is  in 
man,  —  the  wilHngness,  nay,  the  eagerness,  to  be  led ; 
the  dread  of  uncertainty;  the  fear  of  error;  the  bUnd 
reliance  upon  the  older  and  greater  power  near  us,  as 
the  younger  child  looks  up  to  the  elder  one  as  the  em- 
bodiment of  all  goodness  and  all  wisdom.  That  is  one 
side  of  it.  Then,  on  the  other  side,  has  been  the  natural 
human  impulse  to  exploit  these  childKke  motives  for 
ends  good  and  bad.  Men  have  joined  themselves 
together  into  a  great  association  claiming  for  itself  a 
divine  commission  to  receive  and  hold  and  interpret 
for  all  men  the  ultimate  sources  of  religious  truth. 
Revelation  left  free  would,  so  it  has  been  said,  destroy 
itself  in  every  kind  of  unruly  and  violent  expression. 
One  revelation  would  contradict  another;    there  would 


THE   BIBLE 


125 


be  controversies  without  end;  Christians  would  be 
hopelessly  divided  upon  the  most  important  questions. 
The  only  safety  lay  in  acquiescence  with  the  dictation 
of  the  organized  authority.  That  acquiescence  being, 
then,  desirable,  it  followed  that  it  might  be  enforced  by 
every  known  method  of  compelHng  obedience. 

That  has  been  the  solution,  historically,  of  the  prob- 
lem of  testing  revelation.  The  historic  Church  assumed 
the  function,  appHed  the  tests,  and  declared  the  revela- 
tion closed.  Henceforth,  every  effort  of  the  individual 
mind  or  conscience  to  interpret  for  itself  the  "Word  of 
God"  was  rebellion,  revolt  against  the  divinely  con- 
stituted arbiter  of  all  truth.  Every  other  association  of 
men,  in  no  matter  how  honest  an  effort  to  understand 
and  interpret  and  maintain  the  same  body  of  declared 
revelation,  was  not  a  branch  of  the  Christian  Church, 
but  a  mere  conventicle  of  misguided  men,  afloat  on  a 
sea  of  vague  imaginings,  without  rudder  or  compass. 
The  great  release  of  the  Protestant  Reformation  did 
not,  so  far  as  its  immediate  claims  were  concerned, 
greatly  change  the  situation.  It  did  indeed  destroy, 
once  and  for  all,  the  idea  of  a  single  permanent  human 
authority  to  which  all  men  were  bound  to  look  for  the 
last  word  in  faith  and  conduct;  but  it  substituted,  or 
declared  that  it  substituted,  for  this  personal  authority, 
another  no  less  binding  and  even  more  permanent,  the 


126  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

authority  of  the  written  book.  This  substitution  of  one 
authority  for  another  has  often  been  made  a  cause  of 
reproach  against  the  Reformation,  as  if  men  ought  to 
have  seen  farther  ahead  than  the  needs  and  possibilities 
of  their  own  day.  Some  men  there  were,  even  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  who  felt  the  limitation  of  the  domi- 
nant view;  but  they  proved  to  be  the  radicals,  even 
the  fanatics,  of  the  reform  movement.  The  responsible 
leaders  saw,  wisely,  that  to  ensure  any  rational  measure 
of  success  for  the  cause  they  had  most  at  heart  they 
must  not  move  too  fast  or  too  far.  It  would  never  have 
done  to  cast  away  the  principle  of  papal  authority  and 
shake  off  the  control  of  the  Roman  ecclesiastical  law 
without  offering  in  their  place  some  single  and  tangible 
substitute.  A  direct  appeal  to  the  higher  law  of  the 
spirit  would  have  fallen  upon  deaf  ears,  or  if  heard  at 
all  would  have  been  wildly  misunderstood. 

And  yet  from  the  first  moment  when  the  principle  of 
the  authority  of  the  Bible  was  proclaimed  as  the  one 
sufficient  guide  of  Christian  faith  and  practice,  the 
emancipation  of  men's  minds  from  any  external  control 
was  also  declared.  For  from  that  moment  it  was 
clear  that  this  one  all-sufficient  ''Word  of  God"  must 
be  widely  interpreted.  Until  then  there  had  been  but 
the  one  official  interpreter,  claiming  as  of  right  to  be 
the  sole  medium   through  which   the  meaning  of   the 


THE  BIBLE  I27 

written  book  could  be  brought  home  to  the  conscious- 
ness of  men.  But  now  that  one  interpreter  had  been 
rejected,  and  men  found  themselves  face  to  face  with 
two  alternatives:  either  they  must  agree  upon  a  verbal 
and  literal  meaning,  or  else  they  must  give  room  for 
individual  learning  and  critical  inquiry.  Both  of  these 
methods  were  tried;  but  with  the  increasing  enlighten- 
ment of  the  new  age  there  could  be  no  doubt  which 
would  prevail.  The  method  of  literalness  was,  and 
always  must  be,  a  method  of  despair.  It  is  the  nega- 
tion of  everything  that  can  permanently  command  the 
respect  of  thinking  men.  To  insist  upon  it  is  equivalent 
to  asking  that  men  should  cease  to  use  their  minds; 
and  that  they  will  not  long  consent  to  do.  It  was 
tried  and  met  its  inevitable  fate.  In  its  place  came, 
slowly,  with  hesitation  and  apology,  but  ever  with 
steadier  step  and  more  assured  conviction,  the  method 
of  learned  and  reverent  inquiry  and  examination. 
When  Luther  declared,  with  characteristic  vehemence, 
that  the  Epistle  of  James  was  nothing  but  an  ^'epistle 
of  straw,"  because  "there  was  no  Christ  in  it,"  he  was 
laying  down  a  principle  of  criticism  that  has  been  work- 
ing from  that  day  to  this.  If  he,  Luther,  had  the 
right  to  a  personal  judgment  as  to  the  value  of  a  canoni- 
cal book,  he  could  never  deny  to  any  other  learned 
and  serious  minded  man  the  same  right.     Otherwise  he 


128  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

would  only  have  been  proclaiming  himself  in  place  of 
the  Pope  he  had  renounced.  Without  intending  it,  he 
had  opened  up  the  way  for  that  free  and  fearless  study 
of  the  written  word  which  is  the  chief  glory  of  modern 
scientific  theology.  Combated  by  ''the  Church,"  it 
has  commended  itself  to  the  churches,  and  its  victory, 
so  long  as  it  holds  itself  within  the  same  bounds  that 
are  set  for  all  science,  is  secure.  It  need  hardly  be 
added  that  with  all  this  process  of  bringing  this  portion 
of  the  divine  revelation  to  the  understanding  of  men, 
Unitarians  have  as  a  body  been  in  perfect  sympathy. 
If  they  have  not  been  the  leaders  in  it,  this  has  been 
partly  because  they  have  never  laid  that  emphasis  upon 
the  Bible  as  the  sole  source  of  Christian  truth  which 
other  bodies  of  Christians  have  given  to  it  and  partly 
also  because  many  of  what  seem  to  others  starthng 
results  of  learned  research  have  been  from  the  begin- 
ning among  the  commonplaces  of  their  thought.  Their 
acceptance  of  these  results  has  been  prompt  and  hearty. 
The  spirit  which  has  moved  men  to  such  inquiries,  the 
spirit  of  free  and  independent  thought,  the  right  of  the 
human  mind  to  give  itself  satisfaction  on  these  as  well 
as  on  all  other  rational  questions,  is  the  very  spirit  of 
Unitarianism. 

From  what  we  have  just  said  about  Revelation  fol- 


THE   BIBLE 


129 


lows,  as  its  necessary  sequence,  the  Unitarian  thought 
about  Inspiration.  This,  too,  is  a  word  Unitarians  hke 
and  would  be  sorry  to  part  with.  It  means  a  great  deal 
to  them  provided  they  may  give  it  their  own  meanings. 
Otherwise  they  must,  to  be  honest,  let  it  go  and  seek 
to  express  their  thought  in  other  ways.  Revelation  we 
have  understood  as  the  unfolding  to  men,  through  their 
own  powers,  of  the  divine  plan.  Inspiration  may  be 
defined  as  the  agency  through  which  revelation  acts. 
The  two  terms  are  correlative.  Revelation  is  made 
known  through  ''inspired"  men.  Inspiration  is  the 
means  of  revelation.  An  inspired  man  is  one  who  has 
a  revelation  to  make.  There  is  a  history  to  the  word 
inspiration  as  there  is  to  the  word  revelation,  and  this 
history  has  followed  in  general  the  same  course.  From 
a  very  early  moment  in  the  life  of  Christianity,  the 
minds  of  thinking  men  were  turned  to  the  question  of 
the  personalities  through  whom  the  alleged  revelations 
had  taken  place.  Beginning  with  Jesus  himself  the  in- 
quiry could  not  help  being  made :  How  were  these  men 
selected  from  the  mass  of  mankind  to  do  this  specific 
work  ?  It  was  evident  that,  with  the  exception  of  Paul, 
the  alleged  authors  of  the  New  Testament  writings  were 
not  men  of  such  formal  education  that  they  could  be 
described  as  religious  philosophers  working  out  a  scheme 
of  religion  on  the  basis  of  scholarly  inquiry  or  of  pro- 


130  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

found  individual  reflection.  In  general,  the  same  pre- 
sumption would  hold  also  for  the  writers  of  the  Old 
Testament.  Their  varied  production  could  not  be  de- 
scribed as  a  distinctively  learned  '^ output."  In  both 
cases  the  source  of  the  spiritual  strength  that  gave  to 
the  Bible  its  claim  upon  the  attention  of  mankind  was 
felt  to  be  in  something  not  reducible  to  the  ordinary 
processes  of  human  education. 

The  word  for  that  something  was  *' inspiration."  Its 
formal  definition  was  simple  enough.  It  meant  what  its 
derivation  indicated  —  the  "inbreathing"  of  a  message 
or  of  a  personal  quality  from  some  source  outside 
the  man  himself.  The  inspired  man  was  one  upon 
whom  the  divine  breath  had  blown  and  given  him  a 
certainty  and  an  authority  not  derivable  from  any  other 
source.  So  far  men  were  agreed,  but  from  this  point 
on  divergent  views  began  to  appear.  As  in  the  case  of 
revelation  so  here  there  were  marked  extremes.  On 
the  one  hand  it  was  held  that  the  inspiration  by  which 
a  revelation  was  made  possible  must  be  absolute  and 
direct.  It  could  make  no  difference  what  kind  of  per- 
son was  its  vehicle  —  not  even  personal  saintKness  was 
a  condition,  and  still  less  a  trained  intellect.  ''The 
Spirit  bloweth  where  it  listeth"  was  a  sufficient  answer 
to  all  objections.  The  writers  of  the  old  and  the 
new  canons  alike  were  calami  dei,  amanuenses  spiritus 


THE   BIBLE 


131 


sanctij  mere  mouthpieces  for  the  Spirit.  They  were 
not  even  personally  affected  by  the  work  they  were  set 
to  do ;  they  hardly  knew  they  were  doing  it.  They  did 
not  understand  the  message  they  delivered.  When  they 
were  not  immediately  engaged  in  the  work  of  writing, 
they  became  at  once  the  plain,  commonplace  persons 
they  seemed  to  be.  Such  a  view  as  this  excluded  every 
idea  of  inspiration  as  conveying  personal  quality.  At 
most  it  could  give  only  aptitudes,  which  ceased  when 
they  were  not  called  into  immediate  action. 

This  extreme  view  had  the  merit  of  simplicity  and 
consistency.  It  avoided  all  subtlety  of  reflection,  and 
it  seemed  to  carry  with  it  the  more  authority  as  it  ex- 
cluded human  agencies  from  the  work  of  revelation. 
Yet  it  was  never  formally  accepted  by  the  Church. 
Like  the  extreme  impersonal  view  of  revelation,  it  is  a 
doctrine  of  despair.  It  should  be  said  to  the  eternal 
honor  of  the  Catholic  Church  that  it  has  never  been 
willing  to  ehminate  the  human  element  from  its  thought 
of  the  divine  process  in  dealing  with  the  souls  of  men. 
It  accepted  the  idea  of  ''inspiration"  as  of  something 
essentially  superior  to  the  ordinary  processes  of  human 
activity ;  but  it  recognized  also  that  all  results  of  in- 
spiration required  to  be  interpreted.  It  certified  certain 
leaders  of  Christian  thought,  certain  ''Fathers,"  as  pre- 
eminently quahfied  to  give  such  interpretation,  but  it 


132 


UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 


was  not  bound  even  by  these.  It  reserved  to  its  own 
administration,  through  its  principle  of  a  government 
at  once  human  and  divine,  the  continuing  right  to  give 
final  judgment  upon  the  actual  meaning  of  disputed 
texts  of  Scripture.  It  had  scant  patience  with  any  doc- 
trines of  literalism.  It  treated  such  extravagances  as 
in  the  earlier  stages  it  had  dealt  with  all  that  body  of 
puritanic  rigorism  known  under  the  general  term  of 
Montanism.  It  thrust  them  out  into  a  limbo  in  which 
belonged  whatever  aberrations  from  the  strictly  sound 
could  be  regarded  as  dangerous  outgrowths  rather  than 
as  positive  errors.  It  was  reserved  for  the  more  thorough- 
going *' evangelical"  parties  of  the  Reformation  to  force 
this  issue  to  its  ultimate  conclusion  and,  in  so  forcing  it, 
to  develop  the  germs  of  ruin  it  carries  within  itself. 
Allowed  to  have  its  way,  it  went  to  pieces  by  its  own 
weight  and  can  no  longer  command  a  patient  hearing 
among  thinking  men. 

In  its  place  there  comes  a  variety  of  attempts  to  set 
the  limits  of  the  inspiration  of  men  whom  all  were  will- 
ing to  call  ^'inspired."  Sometimes  it  was  said  that  they 
were  technically  inspired  along  certain  lines  and  not  in 
others.  Distinctions  were  drawn  between  their  function 
in  spiritual  matters  and  in  things  purely  material. 
When  they  wrote  history,  it  was  said  they  were  just 
ordinary    men;     when    they    wrote   poetry    they   were 


THE   BIBLE  133 

something  a  little  different  from  men ;  when  they  rose 
to  the  heights  of  prophecy  they  were  hardly  men  at  all, 
but  beings  almost  divine.  The  value  of  what  they  wrote 
came,  not  from  its  own  intrinsic  merit,  but  from  the  fact 
of  inspiration.  Whatever  was  said  by  an  "inspired" 
man,  no  matter  if  it  were  the  veriest  nonsense  when 
measured  by  human  standards,  was  to  be  read  with 
respect  and  somehow  made  to  square  with  his  really 
worthy  utterances.  This  kind  of  circular  reasoning  can 
hardly  seem  to  us  anything  but  a  rather  pitiful  waste  of 
energy  and  yet  it  carried  with  it  great  promise  of  Hght 
and  help.  Behind  it  all  lay  the  one  hopeful  sign  that, 
after  all,  men  were  setting  themselves  free  from  the 
trammels  of  literalism  and  were  coming  to  recognize 
the  truly  human  side  in  the  production  of  religious 
literature. 

As  soon  as  this  note  was  touched,  men  came  to  see 
that  there  was  going  to  be  a  way  out  of  their  hesitations 
and  fears.  It  became  clear  that  human  standards  must 
be  applied  if  human  beings  were  to  be  satisfied  in  their 
demands  for  an  intelligent  and  an  intelligible  faith.  It 
was  seen  that  really  men  had  always  been  using  their 
minds,  even  when  they  were  protesting  that  in  these 
matters  they  had  no  minds  to  use.  Even  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  a  canon  of  the  Old  and  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment, in  the  selection  of  certain  writings  and  the  rejec- 


134  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

tion  of  others,  men  had  used  judgments,  had  applied 
standards,  had  acted  for  themselves.  Unless  we  were 
to  go  back  to  the  vicious  circle  again  and  say  that  the 
men  who  made  these  selections  were  themselves  ''in- 
spired," in  the  rigid  sense  of  that  word,  so  that  their 
action  was  dictated  by  a  power  outside  themselves,  it 
was  evident  that  here,  at  the  very  beginning,  the  prin- 
ciple of  ''criticism"  had  been  laid  down  and  acted  upon. 
So  it  had  been  with  the  later,  mediaeval  treatments  of 
the  Bible.  Human  ingenuity  practised  upon  it  with 
cruel  thoroughness.  It  was  twisted  and  tortured  out  of 
all  semblance  of  reason.  Its  plainest  statements  were 
exhibited  to  a  dehghted  world  in  their  "allegorical," 
their  "tropological,"  and  their  "anagogical"  meanings 
until  the  words  of  Scripture  came  to  be  hardly  more 
than  so  many  counters  in  a  game,  the  rules  of  which 
were  Hkely  to  be  changed  whenever  it  became  tiresome 
to  the  players.  As  one  wades  through  the  tangle  of 
this  half  insane  juggHng  with  the  original  documents  of 
Christianity,  one  is  almost  incHned  to  think  that  the 
boldest  HteraHsm  might  be  less  dangerous.  And  yet, 
through  it  all,  there  is  the  one  hopeful,  forward  pointing 
sign :  that  the  minds  of  men  were  working  on  the  prob- 
lem of  getting  at  the  meaning  of  a  divine  message  in 
human  ways.  In  their  own  fashion  these  hair- spHt ting 
theologians  of  the  Middle  Ages  were  engaged  upon  a 


THE   BIBLE 


135 


psychology  of  inspiration,  sifting  it  to  its  depths  and 
trying  it  by  every  conceivable  test  of  human  ingenuity. 
They  beheved  themselves  to  be  the  most  absolutely 
unquestioning  recipients  of  a  divine  message  from  with- 
out. In  reality  they  were  asserting  the  right  of  their 
manhood  to  reduce  this  message  to  forms  suited  to  their 
own  powers  of  apprehension. 

The  m.en  of  the  Reformation  seemed  to  have  taken  a 
backward  step  toward  hterahsm  and  the  extremest  forms 
of  objective  inspiration.  With  their  intense  emphasis 
upon  Scripture  as  the  sole  ultimate  authority  for  Chris- 
tian faith,  they  could  hardly  have  done  otherwise  than 
seek  to  remove  it  as  far  as  possible  from  all  danger  of 
subjective  opinion.  They  did  what  they  could,  but  it 
was  not  for  men  who  had  themselves  rejected  the  prin- 
ciple of  a  single  authoritative  interpretation  of  Christian 
truth  to  set  bounds  to  the  spirit  of  inquiry  they  had 
evoked.  The  work  of  interpreting  Scripture  must  needs 
go  on,  and  it  went  on  along  the  lines  of  natural,  human 
progress.  The  discussions  within  the  Reform  camp, 
notably  during  the  seventeenth  century,  on  the  question 
of  inspiration,  show  how  hard  the  struggle  was  between 
literalism  and  liberalism.  Even  as  late  as  this  it  seemed 
to  many  worthy  souls  that  all  the  gains  of  the  century 
just  passed  were  at  stake  if  the  element  of  human  per- 
sonality in  the  writers  of  Scripture  were  to  be  given 


136  UNITARIAxN   THOUGHT 

more  than  a  merely  formal  recognition.  After  the 
Reformation  as  before,  men  were  afraid  of  man.  In- 
deed, the  emphasis  of  the  Reformation  upon  the  Augus- 
tinian  doctrine  of  sin  carried  with  it  a  renewed  distrust 
of  human  nature.  Sinful  beings  like  ourselves  could 
not  be  conceived  of  as  the  real  authors  of  the  great 
message  of  the  old  and  the  new  dispensations.  And 
this  distrust  has  continued.  ''I  don't  believe  the  He- 
brews ever  wrote  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament, '^ 
said  a  university  professor,  not  a  theologian,  to  the 
writer  not  long  since.  ^' But  why  not  ?  "  ''  Because  men 
of  so  low  a  grade  as  the  ancient  Hebrews  showed  them- 
selves to  be  could  never  have  risen  to  such  heights  of 
spiritual  utterance."  ''Who,  then,  do  you  think  wrote 
them?"  "No  one  but  God  himself."  Blanker  mind- 
lessness  than  this  can  hardly  be  imagined,  but  it  cer- 
tainly represents  a  widely  extended  opinion  —  or  senti- 
ment taking  the  place  of  opinion  —  at  the  present  day. 
We  have  already  given  it  the  credit  of  simpHcity  and 
consistency.  It  relieves  the  mind  at  once  from  any 
strain  and  lulls  the  conscience  into  a  grateful  repose. 
It  is  precisely  against  this  attitude  of  distrust  toward 
human  nature  that  Unitarians  have  reacted  in  their 
thought  about  Inspiration.  They  do  not  beheve  the 
ancient  Hebrews  or  any  other  people  to  have  been 
chiefly  wicked  or  fooHsh  or  imspiritual.     They  believe 


THE   BIBLE 


137 


every  people,  like  every  individual,  to  be  made  up  of 
capacities  for  activity  of  many  and  different  kinds. 
What  the  race  may  become  or  may  do  in  the  world, 
depends  upon  the  development  of  these  capacities,  just 
as  the  character  and  the  achievement  of  a  man  depend 
upon  the  direction  and  the  employment  of  the  capacities 
with  which  he  is  naturally  endowed.  The  ancient  Greek 
and  the  mediaeval  Italian  were  gifted  with  the  sense  of 
beauty  and  with  the  capacity  for  abstract  speculation. 
The  ancient  Romans  and  the  modern  EngHsh  have  been 
the  great  examples  of  widely  directed  power  in  the 
organization  of  human  society  under  law.  Other  nations 
have  had  these  same  capacities,  only  in  lesser  degree, 
so  that  we  may  fairly  speak  of  these  as  the  flowering  out 
into  perfection  of  qualities  belonging  to  the  human  race 
as  a  whole. 

So  it  was  with  the  especial  endowment  of  the  Hebrew 
people.  Every  branch  of  the  human  family  has  had 
its  religious  instinct  and  has  worked  it  out  into  some 
form  of  expression  peculiar  to  itself  —  in  conformity, 
as  we  say,  to  its  own  genius.  But,  in  the  case  of  the 
Hebrew  race,  this  religious  instinct  may  be  thought 
of  as  its  chief  directing  motive.  It  is  certainly  nothing 
pecuhar  that  its  history  and  its  aspirations  were  iden- 
tified with  its  divine  ideals.  That  was  the  case  with 
most   peoples.     The   gods   were   their   gods,   and   what 


138  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

they  did,  the  gods  did  with  them.  That  is  not  the 
remarkable  thing  about  the  Hebrew  contribution  to  the 
world's  store  of  experience.  What  gave  to  the  Hebrew 
people  its  special  claim  to  the  attention  of  the  world 
was  its  capacity  for  stripping  away  from  the  concep- 
tion of  deity  all  merely  decorative  and  external  elements 
and  rising  to  the  thought  of  Deity  pure  and  simple  as 
the  sole  guide  and  light  of  men.  In  its  highest  mo- 
ments, Hebrew  "prophecy"  touched  a  level  no  other 
ever  reached,  and  even  its  lower  expressions  reveal  a 
striving  after  spiritual  clearness  such  as  no  other  religious 
literature  can  furnish.  What  then  ?  Shall  we  say  that 
the  men  who  brought  to  utterance  all  this  accumulation 
of  the  people's  spiritual  endowment  were  anything  but 
men,  gifted  above  their  fellows  with  the  power  of  in- 
sight which  all  shared  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  ? 

The  Unitarian  answers  that  question  with  a  distinct 
and  unqualified  "no."  He  believes  the  great  voices  of 
the  Hebrew  past  to  have  been  the  voices  of  human 
beings,  specially  gifted  in  this  way  as  others  have  been 
gifted  in  other  ways.  He  sees,  for  example,  a  perfect 
analogy  in  the  varied  endowment  of  men  with  the 
subtle  gift  of  music.  We  find  whole  races  of  men  where 
musical  susceptibiHty  is  almost  universal,  and  others 
where  it  is  altogether  exceptional.  Among  the  more 
gifted  peoples  arise  with  great  frequency  individuals  in 


THE   BIBLE  139 

whom  the  universal  endowment  reaches  an  acute  degree. 
What  others  attain  with  infinite  pains  comes  to  them  as 
easily  as  the  breath  of  life.  Sometimes  such  rare  en- 
dowment is  a  mere  snare  to  the  soul,  —  a  wild,  passionate 
impulse,  leading  no  whither  and  breaking  itself  to  pieces 
against  the  limitations  of  circumstance.  But  when  it  is 
combined  with  vital  gifts  of  character,  then  it  blossoms 
out  into  the  full  flower  of  genius  to  captivate  the  world. 
We  might  multiply  illustrations  from  poetry,  from  paint- 
ing, philosophy,  language,  mathematics,  from  every  field 
in  which  the  mind  of  man  can  exercise  itself.  Every- 
where we  meet  the  same  thing,  —  a  broad  foundation  of 
capacity;  and  rising  upon  this  here  and  there  the  tower- 
ing structure  of  what  we  call,  in  our  lack  of  suitable 
words,  —  ^'genius."  Capacity,  the  inalienable  gift  of 
mankind,  is  the  background  against  which  the  perfect 
creations  of  genius  stand  out  in  such  marvellous  relief 
that  we  are  tempted  to  think  of  them  as  something 
altogether  different  in  nature.  It  is  part  of  our  human 
limitation  that  we  are  caught  by  the  striking  and  ex- 
ceptional and  easily  forget  the  process  by  which  it  was 
attained.  We  wander  through  the  great  collections  of 
ancient  and  mediaeval  art  and  Hnger  long  before  the 
masterpieces  of  Phidias  and  Praxiteles,  of  Michael  An- 
gelo  and  Titian  and  the  rest  of  the  great  ones  who  have 
made  their  names  and  their  day  immortal;    but  after 


I40  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

all,  when  one  comes  to  think  about  it,  the  really  im- 
pressive thing  is  not  the  perfection  attained  by  these 
few,  but  the  extraordinary  endowment  of  talent  in  the 
age  they  represent.  The  hundreds  of  lesser  achieve- 
ments of  lesser  men  bear  witness  to  the  soHdity  of  the 
foundation  on  which  these  masterpieces  of  genius  were 
built  up.  Or,  rather  —  for  the  figure  of  a  building  is 
too  mechanical  in  its  suggestion  —  we  see  in  the  vast 
production  of  lesser  works  the  roots,  the  stem,  the  life 
currents  from  which  the  flower  of  genius  was  to  be 
developed.  Given  all  this  endowment  of  a  race,  and 
great,  striking  individual  expressions  of  it  are  as  sure 
to  follow  as  the  flower  follows  from  the  bud  and  the 
fruit  from  the  flower.  Then  men  stand  agape  at  the 
marvellous  individual  and  overlook  the  process  that 
made  him.  We  hafl  as  "inspired,"  men  who  are  the 
natural  expression  of  what  is  in  a  race,  a  nation,  an 
age,  —  who  are  what  they  are  because  thousands  of 
others  have  lived,  and  worked,  and  sacrificed  to  make 
them  so. 

How  this  comes  about,  we  are  not  here  attempting  to 
inquire.  The  problem  of  genius,  the  whole  question  of 
the  relation  of  the  individual  to  the  mass,  is,  and  will 
remain,  one  of  the  most  perplexing,  as  it  is  also  one  of 
the  most  fascinating,  to  the  speculative  philosopher. 
What  concerns  us  here  is  that  religious  genius  is  to  be 


THE   BIBLE  141 

studied  and  understood,  so  far  as  it  can  be  understood 
at  all,  on  precisely  the  same  lines  as  any  other  form  of 
genius.  If  we  may  speak  of  literary,  or  musical,  or 
artistic  genius  as  the  result  of  "inspiration,"  then  we 
are  ready  to  accept  this  word  also  for  religious  genius  — 
not  otherwise.  The  process  is  as  mysterious  in  the  one 
case  as  in  the  other.  We  know  Httle  about  it,  and  yet 
there  are  probably  few  of  us  who  have  not  at  times 
caught  glimpses  into  the  unseen  region  of  consciousness 
whose  borders  touch  at  so  many  points  our  everyday 
world  of  classified  experience.  Certainly  every  produc- 
tive worker  whose  heart  is  in  his  work  has  seen  moments 
when  he  seemed  to  be  seized  upon  by  some  power  out- 
side himself  and  carried  on  to  results  he  had  not  himself 
foreseen.  The  poet,  i.e.  the  man  of  ''creative"  force,  no 
matter  in  what  material  he  works,  never  can  know  quite 
the  form  his  product  will  take.  He  feels  the  impulse  to 
create,  and  he  sets  himself  to  his  work,  and  as  he  works, 
the  crude  material  at  his  hand  takes  on  shapes  he  had 
not  anticipated.  Only  the  touch  of  genius  in  him  tells 
him  when  these  shapes  are  right,  and  helps  him  to  cor- 
rect them  when  they  are  v/rong.  He  could  not  have 
said  beforehand  at  what  points  in  his  progress  he  would 
rise  above  his  own  level  and  seem  to  be  for  the  moment 
an  instrument  in  the  hand  of  some  greater  power.  Yet 
such  moments  come,  perhaps  not  perceived  by  him,  but 


142  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

evident  to  us,  who  see  his  finished  work.  Then  we  say, 
because  we  do  not  know  how  otherwise  to  express  it, 
these  are  really  ''inspirations."  The  man  does  it;  we 
know  he  does  it,  just  as  we  know  we  have  written  a 
very  good  letter  to  a  friend,  though  when  we  took  our 
pen  we  had  only  the  vaguest  idea  of  what  we  meant  to 
say.  We  do  not  imagine  ourselves  to  have  been  ''in- 
spired" in  writing  our  letter  in  any  sense  excepting 
that  we  have  done  our  best.  Nothing  has  come  out  of 
us  that  was  not  in  us.  We  had  not  thought  it  out  in 
precisely  this  form,  but  in  the  act  of  writing  we  have 
discovered  the  form  suited  to  our  need.  We  could  not 
have  written  just  this  letter  if  we  had  not  long  been  in 
possession  of  the  material,  if  the  thoughts  had  not  been 
familiar  to  us,  and  if  we  had  not  by  experience  gained 
the  power  of  deciding  whether  the  form  of  it  as  it  came 
to  us  was  suited  to  our  purpose. 

Now  the  Unitarian  sees  no  essential  difference  be- 
tween these  lower  forms  of  "inspiration"  and  the  higher 
expressions  of  religious  prophecy.  He  claims  the  right 
to  apply  to  the  higher  forms  as  to  the  lower  the  supreme 
test  of  their  power  to  appeal  to  him.  If  they  are  worthy 
of  being  called  "inspired,"  they  are  so  because  they 
inspire  him.  If  not,  then  for  him  they  have  no  com- 
pelling value.  In  other  words,  he  dares  to  apply  here 
as  everywhere  the  subjective  test.     There  is  for  him  no 


THE  BIBLE  143 

compulsion  to  accept  what  others  have  declared  to  be 
inspired  Scripture  except  as  it  appeals  to  that  in  him 
which  ought  to  respond  to  any  such  imperative  demand. 
He  sees  that  in  fact,  in  the  very  act  of  setting  up  this 
body  of  writings  as  authoritative,  the  men  who  did  this 
were  really  doing  the  same  thing  he  claims  the  right  to 
do.  They  had  their  standards  as  to  what  a  truly  ^'in- 
spired" writing  ought  to  be,  and  why  may  he  not  have 
the  same  privilege  ? 

It  will  be  said  that  on  this  point  as  upon  others  the 
Unitarian  view  is  negative,  destructive,  and  depressing. 
To  the  Unitarian  mind,  on  the  contrary,  it  appears  to 
be  quite  the  opposite  of  all  these.  It  is  a  positive  view 
because  it  rests  upon  a  great  positive  declaration; 
namely,  upon  faith  in  the  capacity  of  human  nature  to 
do  the  greatest  things  that  human  life  requires  of  it. 
As  the  world  goes  on  its  way,  the  thousand  activities  of 
men  moving  along,  now  side  by  side,  now  in  conflict, 
there  come  times  when  the  thoughts,  the  aspirations,  the 
promise  of  a  people  must  find  their  expression  through 
the  voices  most  capable  of  giving  them  adequate  form. 
Hundreds  may  try  it,  but  they  are  silenced  by  the 
clamor  of  petty  interests ;  till  at  last,  no  one  can  predict 
when  or  how,  the  man  comes.  He,  too,  will  have  his 
sorrows.  The  prophet  will  be  persecuted;  but  he  will 
be  heard.     What  he  says  will  remain,   and  men  will 


144  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

say,  ''Here  was  a  man  inspired  of  God."  So  he  was, 
but  so  also  was  the  activity,  the  struggle,  the  failure, 
and  the  triumphs  on  which  the  work  of  the  prophet 
rested.  He  was  the  flower  of  it  all,  —  not  a  something 
apart  from  human  life,  but  essentially  and  vitally  of  it. 
His  word  was  not  his  alone,  but  also  the  voice  of  the 
people  at  its  best,  and  that  is  why  the  people  heard 
him.  These  are  not  negations;  they  are  the  declara- 
tion o±  principles  as  positive  as  any  that  ever  deter- 
mined the  thought  of  any  group  of  serious  men. 

This  means  also  that  besides  being  positive,  the 
Unitarian  thought  about  Inspiration  is  distinctly  not 
destructive,  but  constructive.  It  is  not  destructive, 
because  it  is  in  harmony  with  the  best  and  clearest 
thought  of  all  time  about  the  method  of  the  divine 
dealing  with  man.  In  spite  of  the  prevalence  of  the 
idea  of  spasmodic  interference,  there  has  never  been 
wanting  a  protest  against  it.  The  dignity  of  human 
nature  as  the  chief  handiwork  of  God  has  never  lacked 
vindication.  Unitarianism  only  claims  for  itself  a  freer 
and  more  complete  application  of  this  principle  to  the 
problems  of  speculative  thought.  If  men  can  really  and 
heartily  believe,  as  Unitarians  do,  that  ''inspiration" 
must  be  taken  to  include  every  expression  of  the  highest 
there  is  in  man,  then  upon  this  foundation  they  may 
build  up  a  complete  structure  of  rational  faith  and  a 


THE  BIBLE 


145 


complete  programme  of  rational  living.  That  is  what 
they  mean  by  a  constructive  idea ;  that  it  has  in  it  the 
germs  of  a  fruitful  development,  and  this  can  be  only 
if  the  idea  is  itself  in  harmony  with  the  working  laws 
at  once  of  our  own  thought  and  of  the  world  upon 
which   our  thought  is  exercised. 

So,  again,  the  Unitarian  finds  in  his  view  of  inspira- 
tion, not  a  cause  for  depression,  but  for  every  sugges- 
tion of  hope  and  courage.  It  would  depress  him  if  he 
were  compelled  to  believe  that  men  were  mere  instru- 
ments to  be  played  upon  by  the  breath  of  an  unrelated 
spirit,  as  air  is  forced  into  the  pipes  of  an  organ.  That 
would  make  him  inclined  to  sink  back  into  a  dull  re- 
ceptivity, waiting  for  an  "inspiration"  that  might  never 
come.  But  now,  believing  as  he  does  that  inspiration 
is  to  be  had  only  at  the  price  of  labor,  he  is  ready  to 
put  his  hand  to  the  work  that  lies  near  him,  in  a  cheerful 
confidence  that  he  is  making  his  contribution  to  some 
great  and  truly  inspired  utterance,  whereby  mankind 
shall  be  lifted  up  and  carried  on  to  renewed  labor  and 
to  new  and  ever  new  prophetic  dehverance. 

For  the  Unitarian,  strongly  as  he  may  emphasize  the 
dependence  of  inspiration  upon  the  solid  movement  of 
humanity  in  general,  is  by  no  means  indifferent  to  the 
reaction  of  the  prophet  upon  this  world.  If  it  is  true 
that  there  could  be  no  prophets  without  the  previous 


146  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

experience  of  the  people  from  which  they  draw  their 
inspiration,  it  is  equally  true  that  the  people's  life  would 
be  a  barren  thing  indeed  if  it  were  not  steadily  illumined 
and  quickened  and  encouraged  by  the  prophetic  word. 
''Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people  perish."  The 
true  relation  of  these  two  things,  the  "inspired"  man 
and  the  people  for  whom  he  stands,  is  a  reciprocal  rela- 
tion. Neither  can  do  without  the  other.  The  prophet 
cannot  be  heard  except  by  a  people  with  whose  inner 
life  he  is  in  natural  sympathy.  The  people  cannot 
have  a  prophet  unless  somehow  it  keep  alive,  though  in 
obscurity  and  almost  eclipse,  the  spark  of  a  genuine  and 
creative  national  hope.  Woe  to  the  prophet  if  he  does 
not  share  his  vision  with  the  people !  Woe  to  the 
people  if  it  fail  to  listen  to  the  true  interpreter  of  its 
highest  calling  !  The  prophet  has  a  right  to  demand  a 
hearing,  but  —  and  here  is  the  gist  of  the  Unitarian 
position  —  the  people  have  equally  the  right  to  make 
sure  by  every  test  at  their  command  that  he  is  a  true 
prophet. 

The  Unitarian  approaches  the  Bible  with  reverent 
attention.  He  accepts  it  as  the  highest  revelation  of 
the  past  to  the  present;  the  clearest  expression  of  that 
spiritual  endowment  which  is  to  him  an  essential  part 
of  the  very  idea  of  mankind.  It  appeals  to  him  be- 
cause, being  the  work  of  the  human  spirit,  it  carries 


THE  BIBLE  147 

with  it  the  promise  and  the  guarantee  that  that  spirit 
shall  go  on  doing  great  things  and  thinking  great  thoughts 
and,  whenever  the  people  need,  shall  utter  itself  forth 
again  in  prophecy  that  will  be  heard. 


CHAPTER  V 

JESUS 

O  thou  great  Friend  to  all  the  sons  of  men, 
Who  once  appeared  in  humblest  guise  below, 
Sin  to  rebuke,  to  break  the  captive's  chain, 
To  call  thy  brethren  forth  from  want  and  woe,  — 

Thee  would  I  sing:  thy  truth  is  still  the  hght 
Which  guides  the  nations  groping  on  their  way, 
StumbHng  and  falling  in  disastrous  night, 
Yet  hoping  ever  for  the  perfect  day. 

—  Theodore  Parker. 

The  thought  of  Unitarians  about  the  person  of  Jesus 
follows  naturally  the  two  lines  of  reflection  we  have 
been  noting.  The  indivisibility  of  the  divine  and  the 
essential  worthiness  of  the  human  are  to  them  the  two 
indispensable  foundations  for  an  adequate  notion  of 
Jesus  and  his  place  in  religious  thought.  From  the  first 
follows  the  inevitable  conclusion  that  Jesus  could  not 
have  been  divine ;  from  the  second  follows  equally 
that  to  call  him  human  is  not  to  take  away  anything 
from  his  dignity  or  his  value. 

Let  it  be  clearly  set  down  at  the  outset  that  Unita- 
rians believe  Jesus  of  Nazareth  to  have  been  a  man  like 
the  rest  of  us.     He  was  born  of  a  man  and  a  woman  as 

148 


JESUS  149 

we  are,  in  obedience  to  that  law  of  life  which  maintains 
the  race  and  which  cannot  be  violated.  They  believe 
this  because  they  see  no  reason  whatever  not  to  believe 
it,  and  because  in  the  absence  of  such  reason  they 
would  always  accept  the  natural  and  the  normal  rather 
than  the  abnormal  and  the  mysterious.  Unitarians  find 
nothing  in  the  simpler  narratives  of  the  life  of  Jesus  to 
contradict  their  view  of  his  completely  human  nature. 
On  the  contrary,  they  read  in  these  meagre  accounts 
the  story  of  a  human  Hfe  beginning,  growing,  develop- 
ing along  perfectly  intelHgible  lines;  intelligible  because 
they  have  been  followed  by  so  many  others  of  the  sons 
of  men. 

Of  course.  Unitarians  perceive  from  an  early  point, 
mingled  with  the  simple  record,  a  parallel  stream  of 
mythical  decoration.  It  is  this  mysterious  element 
which  has  chiefly  caught  the  attention  of  men  and 
diverted  them  from  the  simpler  side  of  the  subject. 
And  this,  too,  is  natural.  Men  have  always  been  prone 
to  dwell  upon  the  unusual,  as  if  unusualness  were  in 
itself  a  claim  to  our  interest  and  reverence.  It  would 
have  been  most  strange  if,  the  moment  the  person  of 
Jesus  became  important  as  a  rallying  point  for  certain 
religious  ideas,  it  had  not  been  seized  upon  by  the  myth- 
building  instinct  of  mankind  and  invested  with  an 
ample  equipment  of  marvellous  tales  that  should  excite 


150  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

the  imagination  of  the  faithful,  rouse  the  interest  of 
the  inquiring,  and  give  to  the  figure  of  Jesus  himself  a 
standing  among  the  competing  leaders  of  religious 
thought.  All  this  was  as  natural  as  it  was  that  the 
vivid  play  of  Greek  imagination  should  have  peopled 
the  world  of  Nature  with  a  thousand  Hving  forms  deal- 
ing with  each  other  and  with  men  as  so  many  actual 
personalities.  It  was  as  natural  as  it  was  that  Indian 
reverence  should  have  clothed  the  Buddha  with  a  vast 
decoration  of  marvellous  qualities  and  achievements,  or 
that  Arabian  fancy  should  have  played  about  the  per- 
son of  Mohammed,  even  while  Mohammedan  theology 
insisted  upon  his  immodified  humanity.  The  Unitarian 
does  not  spend  energy  in  analyzing  these  outward  de- 
tails of  Christian  tradition,  in  determining  how  they 
originated,  what  part  of  them  may  be  true  and  what 
part  false,  or  in  weighing  evidence  as  to  their  effect  in 
bringing  men  to  the  following  of  Jesus.  Such  labor 
seems  to  him  rather  to  divert  the  mind  from  the  real 
point  at  issue.  The  really  important  thing  for  him  is 
to  understand  the  relation  of  the  Hfe  and  teaching  of 
Jesus  to  the  world's  religious  thought,  and  he  can  do 
this  only  as  he  holds  firmly  to  the  one  unwavering 
truth  of  his  complete  and  unchanging  humanity. 

Historically,    the    Unitarian    believes    himself    to   be 
justified  in  his  anxiety  on  this  point  by  the  experience 


JESUS  151 

of  the  Church.  He  fears  to  let  his  fancy  play  ever  so 
Hghtly  about  the  idea  of  a  double  personaHty,  lest  he 
be  tempted  into  the  far-reaching  illusions  of  the  past. 
He  sees  in  the  whole  history  of  the  beliefs  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  Christ  a  confusion  of  ideas,  slight  at  first, 
but  growing  denser  with  every  effort  to  explain  it,  until 
it  resulted  in  the  mystical  declarations  of  the  earUer 
and  the  later  creeds  and  fixed  upon  the  Church  that 
spirit  of  dogmatic  speculation  which  has  held  it  captive 
imtil  now  and  is  still  working  from  point  to  point  to 
maintain  the  card-palace  of  its  institutions  and  its 
doctrine.  The  Unitarian  view  on  this  question  will 
become  clearer  if  we  examine  for  a  moment  what  really 
happened.  Within  the  narrow  world  of  Jewish  Hfe  and 
thought  appeared  quite  suddenly  a  youthful  preacher  of 
righteousness,  similar  to  many  a  one  who  had  gone 
before  him.  He  was  a  Hebrew  appeaUng  to  Hebrews, 
but  in  his  appeal  rising  continually  above  the  lower 
levels  of  national  tradition  and  conventionality  into 
higher  regions  of  universal  human  experience.  With 
every  respect  for  the  law,  he  proclaimed  a  higher  law, 
whose  sanction  was  to  be  found,  not  in  a  special  covenant 
between  a  nation  and  its  God,  but  in  a  deeper,  more 
permanent  relation  of  all  men  everywhere  to  a  God 
who  was  the  God  of  all  things. 

What   the  preparation  of   this  teacher  for  his  work 


152  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

had  been,  we  do  not  know.  The  simplest  stories  of 
his  origin  make  him  a  man  of  the  people,  retaining  to 
the  last  his  connections  with  his  immediate  family  and 
making  no  pretension  whatever  to  any  authority  be- 
yond that  which  came  from  a  profound  spiritual  kin- 
ship with  the  source  of  all  truth.  He  was,  in  the  old 
true  sense  of  the  word,  a  "prophet,"  —  one,  that  is,  who 
uttered  forth  the  ways  of  righteousness.  His  teach- 
ing was  a  morality  founded  upon  a  religion.  It  is  not 
true  that  the  Unitarian  regards  Jesus  simply  as  a 
teacher  of  morality.  The  principles  he  laid  down  as  to 
the  right  dealing  of  man  with  man  were  not  all  new  in 
the  world's  thought.  They  were  of  the  kind  which 
over  and  over  again  in  the  ever  renewed  conflict  of  jus- 
tice against  oppression,  of  charity  against  selfishness,  of 
purity  against  infamy,  have  come  from  the  lips  of 
reformers  or  been  embodied  in  the  codes  of  law-makers. 
What  gave  to  the  moral  teaching  of  Jesus  its  peculiar 
significance  was  that  its  sanction  was  to  be  found  in  a 
new  conception  of  the  relation  of  morals  to  the  govern- 
ment of  the  imiverse  as  a  whole.  Right  was  right, 
not  because  the  law  said  so,  nor  because  in  some 
distant  past  a  compact  had  been  made  between  a 
race  and  a  God  who  belonged  to  it,  nor  because  the 
state,  standing  for  the  race,  had  laid  down  this  or  that 
rule   with    its    safeguards    and    its   penalties.     Rather, 


JESUS  153 

right  was  right  because  of  an  essential  harmony  between 
God  and  man  as  creator  and  created,  as  father  and 
child.  That  was  to  be  henceforth  the  test  and  standard 
of  morahty.  If  a  man's  actions  were  attuned  to  this 
greater  harmony,  then  and  then  only  were  they,  in  the 
Christian  sense,  ^' right."  The  ^'spirit  of  truth,"  which 
was  to  abide  among  men  forever,  was  to  be  its  own 
interpreter,  making  plain  to  struggling  man  the  ever 
new  law  of  righteousness. 

That  was  the  mission  of  Jesus,  and  that,  the  Uni- 
tarian believes,  was  his  whole  mission  —  as  if  there 
could  be  anything  greater  than  that  —  to  show  to  all 
mankind  the  way  of  adjustment  to  the  will  of  God  ! 

But  the  world  has  never  been  satisfied  with  the 
simple  and  the  obvious.  The  work  and  the  personality 
of  Jesus  made  so  shght  a  ripple  on  the  surface  of  con- 
temporary Hfe  that  scarce  any  record  of  them  is  to  be 
found  outside  the  immediate  circle  of  his  obscure  and 
baffied  following.  Even  there  the  tradition  of  a  fairly 
early  day  is  represented  only  by  a  singularly  meagre 
and  fragmentary  account.  Yet,  even  in  the  earliest 
records,  there  begins  at  once  the  inevitable  activity  of 
speculative  thought  struggling  to  make  clearer  what 
was  already  clear  enough.  The  subtleties  of  the  Greek 
training  were  brought  in  to  obscure  and  mystify  under 
the  guise  of  explaining  and  harmonizing.     It  was  not 


154  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

enough  that  these  philosophical  exponents  of  Chris- 
tianity should  try  to  account  for  a  human  phenomenon 
so  apparently  inexplicable  on  ordinary  grounds.  They 
went  on  to  confuse  the  personality  of  Jesus  in  a 
hopeless  entanglement  with  an  entirely  different  group 
of  ideas,  and  in  that  confusion  the  theology  of  the 
Church  has  remained  entangled  to  this  day. 

This  other  group  of  ideas  takes  us  into  a  world  of 
speculation  in  which  for  centuries  before  the  time  of 
Jesus  and  in  many  different  countries  human  ingenuity 
had  busied  itself  with  persistent  energy.  It  is  the 
world  of  effort  on  the  part  of  men  to  make  manifest  to 
themselves  the  working  of  divine  power  among  them. 
There  are  two  forms  of  Deity  which,  no  matter  how 
they  may  be  disguised  by  words,  are  always  sure  to 
occupy  the  thought  of  whoever  enters  into  this  world 
of  speculation.  Sooner  or  later  the  mind  comes  to  see 
that  Deity  is  to  be  thought  of  either  as  absolute  or  as 
relative.  Absolute  Deity  is  a  conception  of  the  trained 
mind  of  the  philosopher,  —  a  conception  so  simple  that 
it  requires  profound  insight  to  reach  it.  It  can  be 
gained  only  by  stripping  away,  one  after  the  other,  all 
those  secondary  ideas  about  Deity  to  which  the  average 
thinking  mind  is  so  accustomed  that  it  seems  almost 
born  to  them.  Absolute  Deity  is  as  hard  to  compre- 
hend and  as  useless  for  actual  living  purposes  as  is  the 


JESUS  155 

Absolute  in  any  other  human  affair.  Practically,  the 
mind  refuses  to  dwell  long  upon  absolute  ideas.  It  can 
reach  them,  if  at  all,  only  through  ideas  of  relativity. 
In  plain  language,  it  demands  of  Deity,  as  of  every- 
thing else,  that  it  shall  be  expressed  in  terms  of  some- 
thing outside  itself.  It  finds  relief  from  the  struggle 
after  the  Absolute  in  employing  terms  which  suggest 
the  relation  of  Deity  to  that  which  is  not  Deity.  For 
example,  the  word  '' creator"  is  such  a  term.  The 
moment  we  speak  it,  we  feel  that  we  have  brought  the 
idea  of  God  more  nearly  within  the  range  of  our  own 
limited  powers.  He  is  no  longer  a  mere  abstraction, 
living  in  remote  and  incomprehensible  repose.  He  is 
at  once  brought  into  the  region  of  activities,  and  these 
we  can  at  least  somewhat  more  readily  comprehend. 
''Father"  is  another  such  word.  While  ''creator" 
suggests  one  kind  of  activities,  such  as  we  associate 
with  the  idea  of  the  artisan  who  makes  things  unlike 
himself,  the  word  "father"  suggests  an  altogether 
different  Kne  of  activity.  It  hints  to  us  of  the  famiHar 
processes  of  Nature,  the  silent  working  of  the  forces  by 
which  like  produces  like  and,  producing,  is  bound  to 
its  like  by  every  tender  tie  of  duty  and  affection.  The 
word  "friend"  suggests  still  another  aspect  of  the 
divine  relation.  It  adds  to  the  notions  of  creation  and 
reproduction  the  idea  of  beneficence.     The  divine  artifi- 


156  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

cer  and  parent  is  also  divinely  beneficent,  and  in  this 
new  relation  all  the  other  forms  of  the  divine  expression 
find  their  meaning  and  their  value. 

One  might  go  on  thus  illustrating  this  inevitable 
tendency  of  humanity  to  satisfy  its  imperative  need  of 
expressions  of  the  divine.  Our  only  purpose  here  is  to 
make  clear  that  in  the  early  years  of  Christianity  a 
struggle  was  everywhere  going  on,  with  a  kind  of  fever- 
ish eagerness,  to  give  new  form  to  this  demand.  God, 
reduced  to  an  abstraction  in  the  wreck  of  the  traditional 
polytheisms,  must  again  be  made  manifest  in  some 
satisfactory  expression.  Great  Pan  was  dead.  The 
poetic,  creative  activity  of  the  ancient  mind  that  had 
kept  the  world  suppHed  with  ever  multiplying  images 
of  the  divine  had  ceased  to  work.  The  philosophies  of 
the  day  were  twisting  and  turning  the  vast  problem  in 
every  conceivable  light  without  ever  coming  quite  to 
the  solution  that  would  commend  itself  to  the  con- 
sciousness of  plain  thinking  men.  Then,  not  suddenly, 
but  with  a  marvellous  clarifying  power,  the  possible 
solution  came.  Out  of  the  tangle  of  Hellenic  subtlety 
playing  upon  the  too  bold  simplicity  of  the  Jewish 
tradition  there  emerged  the  —  not  new,  but  novel  — 
conception  of  the  A070?,  the  Divine  Expression,  the 
outward  manifestation  of  that  infolded  pure  Being,  the 
utterance  of   that   eternal   Silence,  the   rapturous  pro- 


JESUS  157 

creation  of  that  sublime  Self-sufficiency  we  have  been 
calling  Absolute  Deity.  It  was  a  wonderful  discovery. 
As  compared  with  the  complicated  polytheisms  of  the 
past,  it  was  a  vast  simplification.  Instead  of  a  thou- 
sand forms  of  the  divine  expression,  it  offered  but  one; 
namely,  the  very  idea  of  the  divine  expression  itself. 
It  was  a  discovery  wholly  in  harmony  with  the  decla- 
ration of  the  great  new  teacher,  that  God  was  spirit 
and  that  his  worship  must  be  undertaken  in  a  spir- 
itual way.  It  bridged  the  chasm  between  Absolute 
Deity  and  the  universe  of  things,  including  the  heart 
of  man,  with  a  highway,  narrow  indeed  as  compared 
with  the  vastness  of  the  ancient  polytheistic  road,  but 
having  deep  and  strong  foundations  and  broad  enough, 
if  only  men  should  be  able  to  rise  to  the  level  of 
the  Master  and  walk  there  with  him  in  spirit  and  in 
truth. 

But  now  see  what  happened.  This  plain  and  spiritual 
solution  was  precisely  what  men  could  not  rise  to. 
Here  were  two  entirely  separate  things:  first,  the 
person  of  a  great  teacher,  about  whom  were  already 
gathering  those  mythical  embellishments  without  which 
men  were  imable  to  account  for  his  radiant  personaHty. 
Then,  second,  there  was  already  in  existence  the  set  of 
ideas  about  an  expression  of  Deity  which  we  have  just 
considered.     The  notion  of  a  Logos,   a  word  of  God, 


158  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

whereby  he  brought  himself  into  closest  relation  with 
man,  was  the  key  to  a  solution  also  of  the  vexed  ques- 
tion as  to  the  person  of  Jesus.  Precisely  how  the  two 
problems  ran  into  one  we  do  not  know.  That  has  been 
a  question  for  the  scholars  of  more  than  one  genera- 
tion. It  has  had  many  answers,  but  they  do  not  con- 
cern us.  We  are  interested  only  in  the  fact  that  the 
two  tb'ngs  did  run  together  and  that  each  helped  the 
other  by  giving  to  it  something  of  its  own  peculiar 
character.  Men  were  perplexed  to  account  for  the 
transcendent  genius  and  the  alleged  wonder-working 
power  of  their  prophet.  They  felt  him  to  be  more  than 
man,  but  neither  in  his  own  teaching  nor  in  the  faith 
of  his  immediate  followers  was  a  formula  to  be  found 
which  precisely  answered  their  question.  The  anxious 
curiosity  of  his  disciples  as  to  who  he  had  been  and 
what  he  really  was,  had  been  baffled  by  the  lofty  spiritual 
answers  of  the  Master,  and  it  had  fared  no  better  with 
the  following  generation  in  its  attempt  to  find  a  satis- 
factory solution.  On  the  other  hand,  the  philosophers 
—  of  whom  the  Alexandrian  Jew,  Philo,  may  be  taken 
as  a  type  —  had  reached  a  brilKant  abstraction  in  their 
Logos,  but  had  not  given  to  it  such  precision  as  could 
make  it  effective  in  moving  the  hearts  of  men.  The 
''Word  of  God"  might  be  given  an  infinite  variety  of 
interpretations,  but  no  one  of  these  could  meet  the  cry 


JESUS  159 

lor  a  specific,  definite  object  about  which  the  awakened 
zeal  for  a  new  divine  ideal  might  gather. 

It  was,  therefore,  a  revelation  of  possibilities  for  both 
sides,  for  philosophy  and  for  Christianity  alike,  when 
the  decisive  word  was  spoken:  ''The  Logos  is  Jesus!" 
At  once  the  human  phenomenon  was  accounted  for  and 
the  speculation  of  the  philosophers  was  given  a  form 
which  took  it  out  of  the  world  of  abstractions  and 
placed  it  in  the  very  centre  of  men's  practical,  religious 
need.  *'The  Word  was  made  flesh  and  dwelt  among 
us"  became  henceforth  the  central  declaration  of  specu- 
lative Christianity.  What  had  been  at  first  a  spiritual 
exaltation  and  a  quickened  moral  impulse  was  now 
identified  with  a  dogmatic  formula.  It  was,  as  we  have 
developed  it  nere,  simple  enough  in  its  origin,  but  with 
ample  room  also  for  further  elaboration.  Jesus  the 
man,  the  prophet,  was  also  Christ  the  God,  the  expres- 
sion of  Deity,  which  was  at  the  same  time  Deity  itself. 
God  and  his  utterance,  the  same  and  yet  different, 
were  now  the  doctrinal  nucleus  about  which  was  to 
grow  the  vast  structure  of  Christian  dogmatism.  From 
that  day  to  this  the  two  things,  the  man  Jesus  and  the 
speculative  Christ,  have  been,  as  we  set  out  by  saying, 
hopelessly  entangled  in  a  confusion  which  has  grown 
worse  as  time  has  gone  on.  The  simple  figure  of  the 
greatest  of  human  prophets  has  been  obscured  beyond 


i6o  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

recognition  in  a  determined  effort  to  make  it  something 
other  than  it  was.  The  creation  of  an  exuberant  specu- 
lative philosophy,  useful  as  a  formula  for  purely  theo- 
logical purposes,  completely  overgrew  the  human  and 
rational  aspects  of  the  Christian  problem.  The  myth 
of  the  divine  paternity  of  the  man  Jesus  was  now  ex- 
plained in  terms  of  the  philosophic  dogma.  The  divine 
which  entered  into  him  through  the  mystic  process  of  an 
immaculate  conception  was  God  himself,  only  under  the 
aspect  of  Deity  in  expression  instead  of  Deity  absolute. 
Now  here  is  the  point  at  which  the  Unitarian  thought 
of  Jesus  becomes  clear.  This  long  historical  introduc- 
tion has  been  necessary  to  give  us  the  background 
against  which  this  simpler  view  may  be  made  to  stand 
out.  The  Unitarian  understands  perfectly  the  two  ele- 
ments out  of  which  the  historical  doctrine  of  the  per- 
son of  Christ  has  grown.  He  agrees  with  the  later 
Church  that  Jesus  was  complete  man.  He  accepts  fully 
the  notion  of  a  Logos  as  a  philosophic  device  for  giving 
a  name  to  a  useful  idea,  the  idea  of  Deity  in  expression 
—  the  divine  Word  —  God  in  relation  instead  of  God 
apart  from  all  relations.  He  has  his  own  way  of  under- 
standing this  formulation  and  will  use  it  as  it  serves 
his  purpose.  But,  and  here  is  the  peculiarity  of  his 
position,  he  will  not  let  these  two  things,  the  humanity 
of  Jesus  and  the  philosophic  proposition,  run  together. 


JESUS  i6i 

To  his  mind  they  have  no  organic  connection.  One  is 
a  pure  statement  of  an  historic  fact.  The  other  is  a 
piece  of  pure  speculation.  The  value  of  each  consists 
in  its  being  kept  clearly  apart  from  the  other.  So,  the 
Unitarian  believes,  were  they  apart  in  the  beginning. 
He  thinks  himself,  therefore,  on  surer  ground,  even  from 
the  point  of  view  of  history,  when  he  refuses  to  let  him- 
self be  carried  away  by  the  temptation  to  put  together 
things  that  belong  apart. 

The  Unitarian  thinks  he  can  make  better  use  of  the 
two  elements  of  historic  dogma  by  carrying  each  out  to 
its  natural  conclusions  than  by  trying  to  make  an  un- 
natural union  between  them.  We  shall  have  to  return 
to  the  idea  of  the  Logos  in  its  proper  place  as  an  aspect 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  nature  of  God.  Enough  to  say 
here  that  to  the  Unitarian  mind  this  idea  of  Deity  in 
expression  is  too  vast  and  too  full  of  suggestions  towards 
an  adequate  comprehension  of  the  divine  nature  to  be 
restricted  in  its  meaning  to  any  one  single  manifesta- 
tion. The  *' Word  of  God"  means  too  much  to  be  limited 
to  any  one  vehicle.  It  includes  all  those  forms  of  the 
divine  dealing  with  man  by  which  man  is  lifted  up  from 
the  material  and  the  common  into  the  higher  reaches 
of  the  spiritual  and  the  ideal.  This  word  of  God  comes 
to  every  man  in  proportion  to  his  capacity  to  take  it. 
It  came  to  Jesus  of  Nazareth  in  fullest  measure  because 


1 62  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

he  was  preeminently  qualified  to  receive  it  and  make 
it  intelligible  to  others.  It  passed  through  the  clarify- 
ing medium  of  his  extraordinary  spiritual  endowment 
and  went  on  from  him  to  elevate  and  enlighten  all  who 
should  have  ears  to  hear  and  minds  to  understand. 
That  is  what  the  Unitarian  does  with  the  speculative 
idea  of  the  Logos.  He  uses  it  to  make  clearer  to  him- 
self the  thought  of  God.  He  is  grateful  for  it  to  those 
early  thinkers  who  have  helped  him  to  it.  But  he 
could  not  make  it  do  him  this  service  if  he  were  to  bind 
it  organically  to  one  single  human  figure,  and  it  interests 
him  to  find,  as  he  reads  the  writings  of  the  great  Chris- 
tian theologians,  how  hard  they  struggled  to  free  them- 
selves from  the  same  bondage.  The  best  of  them  in 
their  highest  moments  still  clung  to  the  larger  spiritual 
view  of  the  Logos  which  he,  the  Unitarian,  maintains  as 
essential.  Their  efforts  were  lost  in  the  all-absorbing 
purpose  of  reaching  formulas  to  which  all  the  conflicting 
parties  in  the  Church  could  be  brought  to  consent. 
The  Unitarian,  utterly  unconcerned  as  he  is  with  this 
problem  of  a  universal  agreement,  sees  no  reason  why 
he  should  not  hold  fast  to  that  which  seems  good  to 
him,  and  it  helps  him  to  feel  himself  in  fellowship  with 
much  of  the  noblest  and  most  independent  thought  of 
the  past. 

On  the  other  side  of  the  question,  —  the  side  of  the 


JESUS  163 

pure  humanity  of  Jesus,  —  the  Unitarian  rejoices  espe- 
cially in  the  liberty  which  comes  when  the  person  of 
the  Master  is  set  free  from  the  entanglements  of  specu- 
lative theology.  If,  in  the  process  of  this  disentangle- 
ment, he  is  forced  into  a  use  of  language  that  seems  to 
imply  a  certain  disparagement,  no  sooner  is  the  cause  of 
offence  removed  than  he  is  free  to  declare  his  unswerv- 
ing allegiance  to  the  example  and  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
Precisely  because  he  believes  Jesus  to  be  a  man  like 
himself  he  finds  in  him  an  example.  It  means  nothing 
to  him  to  be  told  that  a  being  of  specific  divine  origin, 
even  God  himself,  lived  on  this  earth  a  life  of  singular 
purity,  elevation,  courage,  sanity,  and  devotion.  These 
are  things  that  are  taken  for  granted  in  divinity.  Such 
words  are,  after  all,  only  the  symbohc  phrases  by  which 
we  seek  faintly  to  express  our  ideas  of  the  divine.  We 
know,  alas  !  only  too  well,  that  we  are  not  —  in  any 
such  sense  —  of  divine  origin.  No  heavenly  splendors 
surrounded  our  nativity.  Only  the  happy  smiles  of 
pure  motherhood  and  the  manly  pride  of  confident 
fatherhood  welcomed  us  into  the  struggle  of  human 
life.  How  shall  we  draw  lessons  of  courage  from  a  being 
who  by  his  very  definition  must  be  brave,  when  all  the 
time  we  know  that  as  men  we  are  made,  not  brave  but 
only  with  the  desire  and  the  possibihty  of  being  brave  ? 
Why  should  a  God,  whose  very  nature  is  purity,  sum- 


1 64  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

mon  me,  in  whose  nature  one-half  is  turned  toward  im- 
pulses of  selfish  desire,  to  be  perfect  as  he  is  ? 

No,  it  is  belief  in  the  perfect  humanity  of  Jesus  that 
alone  commends  him  to  us  as  an  attainable  example. 
Without  that  he  remains  a  mere  abstraction,  a  shadowy 
image  of  humanity,  a  divine  apparition  clothed  with 
the  semblance,  but  utterly  lacking  in  the  reahty,  of  a 
man.  And  what  is  true  of  Jesus  as  an  example  is  equally 
true  of  him  as  a  teacher.  The  Unitarian  finds  the  chief 
sanction  of  Christian  teaching  in  the  perfect  community 
of  nature  between  the  teacher  and  the  great  human 
world  he  tried  to  teach.  This  morahty,  that  we,  in  our 
weakness  and  blindness,  try  to  make  the  guide  of  our 
struggling  lives  —  what  could  it  mean  to  us  if  it  were 
laid  down  by  a  divine  being  to  whom  the  real  struggle 
of  human  life  could  not  be  known  ?  It  would  be  for  us 
as  barren  of  real  instruction  as  if  it  came  from  the  in- 
habitants of  another  world,  who  had  never  learned  the 
conditions  that  govern  our  lives  here  on  the  earth.  It 
is  only  when  we  think  of  Jesus  as  a  man,  without  figures 
of  speech  and  without  mental  reservations,  that  his 
example  and  his  teaching  alike  can  be  borne  in  upon 
us  with  that  kind  of  conviction  which  can  make  them 
fruitful  in  our  own  actions. 

It  will  be  objected  that  following  this  view  of  Jesus 
we  are  led  inevitably  to  the  conclusion  that  he  was  a 


JESUS  165 

man  of  "sin"  as  we  know  ourselves  to  be.  "Tempted 
at  all  points  as  we  are  and  not  without  sin"  would 
seem  to  be  the  logical  result  from  the  doctrine  of  the 
complete  humanity  of  Jesus.  From  this  conclusion  the 
Unitarian  does  not  shrink.  He  is  ready  to  admit  with 
the  utmost  frankness  that  in  all  probability  Jesus  had 
his  moments  of  opposition  to  the  divine  will  which  con- 
stitute the  attitude  of  "sin."  Even  our  meagre  and 
laudatory  accounts  of  him  give  abundant  support  for 
this  view.  Naturally  such  reports  would  not  dwell 
upon  this  side  of  a  prophet's  experience,  but  no  one 
can  read  the  Gospels  with  open  mind  and  not  feel  that 
they  show  us  a  man  indeed.  Jesus  was  a  man  in  whom 
the  impulses  of  a  supreme  charity  were  made  to  domi- 
nate over  all  others;  but  his  victory  was  won,  as  all 
human  victories  must  be  won,  after  bitter  struggle  with 
his  own  lesser  self.  He  was  tempted  by  the  devils  of 
ambition,  of  power,  of  ease,  of  safety,  and  he  overcame 
them,  not  in  virtue  of  any  specific  divine  quality  which 
we  do  not  share,  but  because  in  him  the  balance  of 
power  inclined  to  the  side  of  good,  as,  by  the  fact  of  our 
common  humanity,  it  may  be  made  to  do  also  in  us. 
The  radiance  of  this  moral  victory  is  not  dimmed  by 
the  thought  of  defeats  he  may  have  suffered  before  his 
character  had  attained  to  that  mastery  shown  in  the 
brief  record  of  his  ministry.     On  the  contrary,  just  as 


1 66  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

in  ordinary  life  we  value  the  triumphs  of  the  disciplined 
will  in  proportion  to  what  they  have  cost,  so  our  rever- 
ence for  the  person  of  Jesus  ought  rather  to  rise,  as  we 
admit  the  idea  of  failure  and  of  wrong  into  our  picture 
of  his  earthly  career.  More  than  ever,  through  this 
admission,  we  become  his  younger  brothers,  born  of 
the  same  lineage,  heirs  of  the  same  promise,  sharers  in 
the  same  covenant,  moved  by  the  same  impulses  and 
capable  of  the  same  triumphs  —  if  only  we  will  submit 
ourselves  to  the  same  discipline  and  draw  our  strength 
from  the  same  eternal  source. 

The  Unitarian  finds  himself  strengthened  in  his  in- 
sistence upon  the  pure  humanity  of  Jesus  when  he  sees 
how  hard  the  Church  of  all  ages  has  worked  to  main- 
tain the  same  point.  No  error  within  Christianity  has 
ever  been  fought  with  greater  energy  than  the  error  of 
Doketism.  That  was  a  logical  deduction  from  the  doc- 
trine of  the  divinity  of  Christ,  which  led  men  by  various 
roads  to  the  conclusion  we  have  already  hinted  at,  that 
the  physical  Jesus  can  have  been  only  a  delusion  of 
the  senses,  —  that  he  was  not  born,  did  not  really  live 
and  suffer,  especially  did  not  really  die.  He  only 
seemed  to  do  all  these  things.  It  was  really  God  who 
thus  went  through  the  forms  of  human  experience  in 
order  that  he  might  the  better  bring  men  into  harmony 
with  himself.    To  combat  this  one-sided  logic  the  Church, 


JESUS  167 

from  an  early  day,  insisted  by  every  means  in  its 
power  upon  the  real  humanity  of  Jesus.  It  dwelt  in 
its  ritual,  in  its  poetry,  and  in  its  art  with  special  em- 
phasis upon  the  figure  of  the  suffering  man.  It  de- 
veloped as  the  central  object  of  its  regular  devotion  the 
mystic,  sacrificial  meal  whereby  the  actual  physical 
body  of  Jesus  was  made  to  live  again  —  to  be  handled 
by  the  priest  and  taken  into  physical  union  with  the 
bodies  of  the  faithful.  In  this  mystical  fashion  the 
physical  death  of  the  God-man  was,  and  is,  regularly 
brought  home  to  the  mind  of  the  behever  with  the 
force  of  a  physical  demonstration. 

Where  then  is  the  difference?  It  is  here.  The 
Church,  while  it  has  thus  insisted  upon  the  pure  hu- 
manity of  Jesus,  has  insisted  equally  upon  the  pure 
divinity  of  Christ  and  has  confused  the  two  ideas  by 
maintaining  a  mystical  union  between  them.  Through 
its  doctrine  of  a  specific  incarnation  by  means  of  a  vir- 
gin birth,  it  has  given  to  this  confusion  of  ideas  a  dra- 
matic form  that  has  appealed  powerfully  to  the  imagi- 
nation of  centuries.  So  strong  is  this  appeal  even  in  our 
*' scientific"  day  that  within  a  generation  one  branch 
of  the  Church  has  been  able  to  let  the  logic  of  the  situa- 
tion work  backward  by  one  degree  and  to  proclaim  the 
''immaculate"  conception  of  the  virgin  mother  of  Jesus  ! 
Even  so-called  ''Protestant"  churches  while  rejecting 


1 68  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  worst  extravagances  of  this  Christian  polytheism 
have  retained  the  doctrine  that  makes  them  possible. 
They,  too,  insist  upon  confusing  ideas  which  do  not 
essentially  belong  together.  They  continue  to  repeat 
in  their  creeds  and  to  defend  through  their  theologies 
a  tangle  of  contradictions  dignified  only  by  the  seri- 
ousness with  which  it  is  maintained.  They  seem  to 
be  at  that  stage  of  development  when  men  cHng  to 
forms  for  the  forms'  sake  and  defend  imtenable  ideas 
for  fear  of  some  vague  calamity  that  might  attend  their 
loss. 

The  Unitarian  is  freed  from  all  such  mysterious  dread 
by  his  positive,  clear  distinction  between  the  actual  and 
the  ideal.  He  welcomes  in  the  happiest  confidence  the 
humanity  of  Jesus  as  common  with  his  own  and  as 
therefore  opening  up  to  him  ever  fresh  sources  of  in- 
spiration and  of  courage.  He  accepts  the  leadership  of 
Jesus  in  his  own  efforts  to  be  a  better  member  of  the 
race  which  has  found  its  highest  expression  so  far  in 
that  inspiring  personality.  There  is  no  relation  of  life 
as  citizen,  as  parent,  as  laborer,  as  ruler,  as  servant,  in 
which  he  cannot  find  continuous  support  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  kinship  with  an  elder  brother,  who  saw  all 
these  relations  in  the  fight  of  a  common  divine  respon- 
sibility and  glorified  them  all  forever  by  showing  them 
to  men  under  that  illuminating  aspect. 


JESUS  169 

So,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Unitarian  is  quite  able  to 
understand  the  value  of  that  theological  process  by 
which  Deity  is  conceived  of  as  projecting  itself  into  the 
world  of  human  experience.  He  believes  most  heartily 
that  Jesus  received  in  fullest  measure  that  gift  of  in- 
sight into  the  true  harmony  of  things  which  we  cannot 
otherwise  describe  than  by  calling  it  ^'divine."  That  is, 
indeed,  his  definition  of  the  divine,  —  the  central  prin- 
ciple of  harmony  that  holds  all  being  together  in  one 
unvarying  law.  He  believes  Jesus  to  have  been  a  true 
interpreter  of  that  law  because  it  had  so  entered  into 
him  as  to  be  a  part  of  him  —  to  make  him,  in  some 
sense  ^'divine."  But  the  Unitarian  believes  also,  with 
equal  intensity,  that  this  same  divine  quahty  that  was 
in  Jesus  is  also  in  every  man  that  is  born  into  the  world. 
Less  developed,  rudimentary  it  may  be  still,  but  it  is 
there  and  waiting  only  for  the  touch  that  shall  make  it 
spring  into  fruitful  activity.  Unitarianism  ranges  itself 
in  this  matter  with  what  it  feels  to  be  the  world's  best 
and  clearest  thought  at  all  times.  It  sees  in  the  so- 
called  Christian  doctrine  of  an  individual  incarnation 
only  one  of  many  attempts  to  make  tangible  what 
many  races  at  many  times  have  tried  to  bring  home  to 
themselves  —  the  sense  of  the  divine,  working  in  and 
through  the  very  nature  of  man.  In  this  effort  he  finds 
the  explanation  of  all  the  world's  polytheisms.     These 


lyo  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

seem  to  him  only  picturesque  devices  for  bringing  God 
nearer  to  man.  Sometimes  they  picture  Deity  as  tak- 
ing on  human  forms,  according  to  the  functions  it  is 
called  upon  to  perform ;  sometimes  they  elevate  human 
personaHties  to  divine  levels  as  the  only  fitting  expres- 
sion for  a  distinction  that  seemed  to  lift  certain  elect 
individuals  above  all  possibihty  of  human  classification. 
But  in  any  case  these  were  only  devices  to  make  definite 
what  by  its  very  nature  must  always  remain  undefined 
to  man,  —  the  being  of  God  himself.  That  impossibih^y 
of  definiteness  the  Unitarian  accepts  as  final.  He  does 
not  feel  the  necessity  of  incorporating  his  thought  of 
God  into  any  human  form.  He  resents  all  polytheistic 
devices  as  an  affront  to  his  highest  ideal  of  Deity,  and 
among  these  devices  he  includes  the  so-called  Christian 
doctrine  of  an  incarnation  by  a  virgin  birth.  He  re- 
volts against  it  on  every  account.  He  rejects  it  on  the 
ground  of  history  because  he  finds  in  other  religions  so 
close  analogies  to  it  that  it  loses  whatever  distinction 
might  attach  to  it  on  the  basis  of  a  unique  claim  upon 
the  faith  of  mankind.  He  revolts  from  it  on  its  own 
merits,  because  it  seems  to  him,  not  a  glorification  of 
human  motherhood,  but  an  insult  to  it.  It  qualifies  as 
*'sin"  the  purest  and  hoHest  of  human  relations.  It 
dismisses  the  sacred  function  of  fatherhood  into  a 
shadowy  limbo  of  indifference  and  neglect.     Instead  of 


JESUS  171 

elevating  woman  to  her  place  as  the  indispensable  and 
equal  companion  of  man,  it  degrades  her  to  be  the 
vehicle  of  procreation,  the  mere  channel  through  which 
flowed  all  that  made  her  offspring  higher  than  the 
"  psychic  man  "  of  the  philosophers,  while  she  contrib- 
uted only  that  which  made  him  the  ''son  of  David,"  the 
material  framework  for  the  ''sinless"  god.  It  matters 
little  that  men  have  sought  to  evade  the  direct  issue 
here.  It  is  true  that  under  the  light  of  an  age  at  once 
more  rational  and  more  spiritual,  the  grosser  extrava- 
gances of  this  insidious  doctrine  have  been  widely  re- 
jected. While  a  fraction  of  the  Church  has  tried  to 
push  these  extravagances  to  their  utmost  limit,  the 
rest  have  on  the  whole  reduced  them  to  an  apparent 
minimum.  Yet  in  spite  of  this  the  offence  remains. 
The  Unitarian  alone  among  Christians  takes  an  at- 
titude on  this  point  which  can  in  no  sense  be  de- 
scribed as  a  hesitating  or  negative  one.  It  is  in  the 
most  distinct  sense  positive,  in  that  it  rests  upon  the 
great  assertions  of  the  dignity  at  once  of  human  nature 
and  of  the  divine  ideal.  A  God  who  should  have  to 
resort  to  so  petty  a  device  to  set  himself  in  a  right  rela- 
tion with  a  race  of  beings  he  has  himself  created,  would 
be,  according  to  Unitarian  thought,  unworthy  of  the 
devotion  of  rational  men.  And  a  race  of  men  that 
could  not  otherwise  be  held  in  its  right  relation  with  a 


172  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

God  whose  being  and  attributes  it  has  itself  defined 
would  not  be  worth  the  saving. 

The  Unitarian  welcomes  the  whole  conception  of  the 
''salvation"  of  the  race  through  a  human  interpretation 
of  the  divine  to  men.  He  rejects  the  idea  of  a  ''salva- 
tion" accomplished  by  a  violation  of  natural  law,  be- 
cause it  seems  to  him  to  interfere  with  this  far  grander 
and  ampler  conception  of  a  continuous,  unbroken,  and 
never-to-be-ended  unfolding  of  the  divine  plan  through 
the  thoughts  and  efforts  of  successive  generations  of 
mankind.  The  person  of  Jesus  thus  takes  its  place  in 
Unitarian  thought  as  one  in  a  long  line  of  revealers  to 
men  of  the  law  by  which  they  are  called  upon  to  live. 
He  was  not  the  first ;  he  will  not  be  the  last.  He  de- 
clared himself  to  be,  not  the  destroyer,  but  the  fulfiller 
of  what  went  before.  At  the  close  of  his  earthly  work 
he  declared  again  that  he  was  leaving  with  men  a  some- 
thing that  would  not  fail  them,  namely,  the  Spirit  of 
Truth,  which  was  to  stay  with  them  forever.  Thus  he 
connected  himself  with  the  past  and  with  the  future 
alike,  demonstrating  in  this  way  that  he  felt  himself  a 
Hnk  in  an  endless  chain  of  prophecy.  That  is  precisely 
the  Unitarian  thought. 

Much  time  has  been  spent  in  efforts  to  prove  that 
Unitarians  have  no  right  to  the  name  of  Christians. 
On  the  other  hand,  much  energy  has  been  wasted  in 


JESUS  173 

vigorous  protests  against  the  exclusion  thus  implied.  It 
may  safely  be  asserted  that  the  Unitarian  is  not  greatly 
concerned  about  names.  It  is  far  more  important  to 
him  that  a  name  should  be  given  its  right  meaning  than 
it  is  that  it  be  preserved  when  the  meaning  has  become 
perverted.  He  would  far  rather  drop  the  name  "Chris- 
tian" than  share  it  in  many  of  the  perverted  senses  it 
has  acquired.  If,  for  example,  ''Christian"  means,  as 
is  constantly  asserted  in  every  variety  of  official  utter- 
ance, the  same  thing  as  ''Holy  Catholic  and  Apostolic," 
then  better  a  thousand  times  to  drop  it  once  for  all  and 
find  a  new  word,  or  get  along  without  any  rather  than 
place  such  a  limit  upon  that  Spirit  of  Truth  which  is 
forever  among  us.  Or  if,  to  be  a  Christian,  one  must 
be  able  to  point  to  a  certain  variety  of  religious  experi- 
ence, whereby  some  specific  and  mysterious  spiritual 
transformation  can  be  certified  to,  then,  indeed,  the 
Unitarian,  with  a  regret  that  has  a  certain  touch  of 
sympathy,  must  give  up  the  name  and  do  as  well  as  he 
can  without  it.  Or  if,  again,  he  only  is  a  Christian  who 
is  willing  to  declare  his  assent  to  certain  prescribed  forms 
of  theological  beliefs,  then  the  Unitarian  must  stand 
firmly  upon  his  conscience  and  go  his  way. 

The  attempted  exclusion  of  Unitarians  from  the 
Christian  name  has  always  rested  upon  one  or  the  other 
of  these  grounds.     Either  because  they  have  refused  to 


174  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

accept  the  discipline  of  the  historic  Church,  or  because 
they  will  not  be  bound  by  the  dogmatic  forms  of  any 
sect,  they  have  been  consigned  to  a  limbo  of  their  own, 
wherein,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  they  have  not  been 
as  unhappy  as  perhaps  they  ought.  They  have  found 
some  comfort  in  the  reflection,  as  true  in  the  world  of 
thought  as  in  that  of  society,  that  ''the  exclusive  man 
excludes  himself."  Each  of  these  self-constituted  ar- 
biters of  Christianity  seems  to  Unitarians  to  be  shutting 
itself  out  of  that  larger  fellowship  which,  in  the  earhest 
days,  delighted  in  sharing  the  joys  and  perils  of  "The 
Name."  In  that  fellowship  the  Unitarian  desires  to  be 
counted.  He  values  the  name  Christian  for  many 
reasons.  His  own  thought  has  a  completely  Christian 
basis. 

It  is  not  true  that  Unitarianism  is  a  result  of  con- 
scious study  of  the  religions  of  the  world  and  a  patch- 
ing together  of  such  fragments  from  each  as  suited  the 
purpose  of  its  founders.  It  is  true  that  Unitarians  gladly 
recognize  and  welcome  every  kindred  thought  wherever 
they  find  it.  It  strengthens  them  to  know  that  their 
way  of  approach  to  the  hidden  things  of  God  has  been 
trodden  by  many  other  feet  of  men.  But  in  fact  their 
most  cherished  ideas  came  into  shape  through  a  rational 
process  within  the  lines  of  orthodox  Christianity,  and 
they  have  no  desire  to  repudiate  the  paternity  of  these 


JESUS  175 

ideas.  They  yield  to  no  one  in  their  admiration  and 
devotion  to  the  person  of  him  to  whom  all  Christians, 
no  matter  with  what  diversities,  turn  as  to  their  com- 
mon Master  and  Guide.  It  does  not  lessen  his  tran- 
scendent value  to  them  that  they  recognize  his  kinship 
with  the  great  spiritual  leaders  of  all  peoples  and  all 
ages.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  to  them  a  far  higher  claim 
upon  their  allegiance  that  he  stands  within  the  hues  of 
natural  development  and  asks  no  assent  to  any  pre- 
scribed forms  of  faith.  They  are  interested  to  know  all 
they  can  about  other  great  leaders  of  religious  thought 
—  about  Buddha  and  Zoroaster,  Mohammed  and  the 
Greek  and  Roman  religious  and  moral  philosophers,  but 
they  do  this  not  to  see  whether  perchance  they  may 
find  some  other  leader  more  worthy  of  their  loyalty. 
They  are  satisfied  with  the  leadership  of  Jesus  so  long 
as  they  are  permitted  to  interpret  this  in  the  light  of 
all  the  truth  they  can  find  anywhere.  In  that  leader- 
ship they  find  perfect  liberty,  for  it  is  to  them  of  its 
very  essence  that  in  following  it  they  learn  the  truth 
which  makes  them  free. 


CHAPTER  VI 

REDEMPTION 

Under  one  form  or  another  the  idea  of  redemption 
enters  into  all  of  the  more  highly  developed  religions. 
It  rests  upon  the  two  notions,  first,  of  a  normal  relation 
between  God  and  man;  and,  second,  a  severance  or  in- 
terruption of  that  relation.  Somehow,  at  some  time, 
this  broken  relation  must  be  restored  and  man  be  brought 
back  again  into  his  true  dependence  upon  God.  The 
Christian  problem  was  not  essentially  different  from 
that  of  other  religions.  Here,  too,  there  was  a  separa- 
tion, a  rebelling,  a  ''fall"  from  an  original  high  estate, 
wherein  all  men  by  virtue  of  their  very  manhood  were 
included.  Christian  philosophy,  working  upon  this 
universal  basis,  evolved  a  ''scheme"  —  many  schemes 
in  fact, — whereby  this  loss  might  be  made  good,  this  war 
of  rebellion  ended,  the  victims  of  this  "fall"  be  set  up 
again  on  the  heights  where  they  really  belonged. 

It  must  be  admitted  that,  dramatically  considered, 
the  materials  for  a  scheme  of  redemption  were  attrac- 
tive enough.  On  the  one  hand.  Deity  projected  into 
the  world  by  means  of  the  Logos  idea  —  Deity  set  work- 
ing among  men,  working  in  power,  in  wisdom,  and  in 

176 


REDEMPTION  177 

love.  On  the  other  hand,  man  made  to  be  perfect,  in 
complete  harmony  with  the  divine,  but  separated  from 
his  divine  source  by  a  process  in  which  he  himself  had 
at  least  a  part,  —  in  technical  language,  by  a  ^'sin"  of 
which  he  was  at  least  partially  guilty.  And  then, 
between  the  two,  sharing  completely  the  nature  of 
both,  the  figure  of  a  God-man,  Deity  in  humanity, 
reconciHng  all  antagonisms,  aboKshing  all  oppositions, 
restoring  all  that  had  been  lost,  building  up  what  had 
fallen  down. 

There  is  something  in  this  presentation  that  appeals 
readily  to  the  imagination.  It  touches  our  sense  of 
justice.  It  satisfies  the  craving  for  a  symmetrical  ad- 
justment of  our  complex  manhood  to  the  regularity  and 
simplicity  of  a  universal  system.  It  meets  also  that 
longing  for  the  personal  which  has  ever  been  a  potent 
factor  in  determining  the  forms  of  religious  expression. 
It  is  no  wonder  that  in  the  struggle  of  opposing  parties 
to  make  clear  to  the  understanding  the  function  of 
Jesus  in  the  world,  this  scheme  should  have  commended 
itself  as  on  the  whole  offering  the  least  difficulties. 
There  were  many  varieties  of  Christian  philosophy  to 
choose  from.  The  more  carefully  trained  among  the 
early  thinkers,  the  so-called  ^'Gnostics,"  the  '' knowing 
ones"  in  all  their  varieties,  evolved  the  most  elaborate 
devices  whereby  the  lost  equilibrium  of  the  race  was  to 


178  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

be  restored.  Their  command  of  all  the  resources  of  all 
existing  rehgions  was  complete,  and  none  was  left  un- 
employed in  these  singular  attempts  at  a  Christian 
philosophy  that  should  once  for  all  settle  the  vexed 
questions  of  the  origin,  the  nature,  and  the  destiny  of 
the  human  soul.  Enough  for  us  here  that  these  attempts, 
addressed  as  they  were  to  the  trained  and  informed  in- 
tellect, found  no  response  in  the  general  consciousness  of 
Christendom. 

Hardly  better  did  it  fare  with  those  other  parallel 
attempts  which  under  the  general  name  of  Montanism 
set  ''prophecy"  against  philosophy,  the  free  working 
of  the  Holy  Spirit  against  the  formulated  processes  of  a 
divine  mechanism.  The  idea  of  the  Holy  Spirit  repre- 
sented, indeed,  a  great  truth  which  no  one  could  ques- 
tion or,  even  for  a  moment,  afford  to  neglect :  the  truth 
of  a  divine  presence  and  power  working  as  it  listed  in 
the  hearts  of  men,  defying  definitions  and  formulations, 
speaking  through  no  estabhshed  organs,  but  whenever 
and  wherever  it  pleased,  bringing  the  truth  of  God 
directly  to  the  spiritual  comprehension  of  the  faithful. 
But  if  the  elaborations  of  Gnosticism  were  too  mechani- 
cal to  appeal  powerfully  to  the  rehgious  desire  of  a 
world  in  labor  with  redemptive  struggles,  the  ''pro- 
phetic" dreams  of  Montanism  were  too  vague  to  satisfy 
the  longing  for  clearer  intellectual  formulations.     What 


REDEMPTION  179 

was  demanded  was  something  at  once  precise  and 
simple,  free  from  the  extravagances  ahke  of  philosophy 
and    of    unregulated    enthusiasm. 

The  solution  was  found,  historically,  in  the  doctrine  of 
a  redemption  through  the  personality  of  Christ.  In  the 
schemes  of  the  Christian  philosophies  the  person  of  Christ 
had  entered,  as  it  were,  by  violence.  The  schemes  them- 
selves were  too  complete  without  him.  They  presented 
a  view  of  the  imiverse  of  men  and  things  as  something 
revolving  by  a  sufficient  law  of  its  own,  which  in  due 
time  would  bring  about  its  ''redemption"  through  the 
force  of  its  own  completeness.  The  person  of  Christ 
came  into  these  cosmic  schemes  as  a  kind  of  importa- 
tion from  the  outside,  a  foreign  element,  not  substan- 
tially wrought  into  their  inner  structure.  The  world, 
one  feels  in  reading  them,  would  have  redeemed  itself 
without  his  aid.  His  relation  to  it  was  dramatic,  fic- 
titious and  not  causal.  So  it  was  once  again  with  the 
idea  of  redemption  under  the  forms  of  Montanistic 
fervor.  The  doctrine  of  a  continuous  revelation  or 
''prophecy"  which  had  always  been  and  always  would 
be  to  the  end  of  time,  pointed  indeed  to  a  culmination 
of  humanity,  but  it  was  a  culmination  in  which  the 
man  Christ  had  no  specific  share.  No  matter  how  his 
personality  might  be  glorified  in  words,  the  fact  re- 
mained  that  his   message  was   only  one  intermediate 


i8o  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

chapter  in  a  long  unfolding  of  the  divine  law  that  had 
gone  on  before  him  and  would  go  on  after  him.  It  was 
splendid,  but  it  was  not  destined  to  be  ''Christian." 
Christianity,  under  the  conditions  of  the  third  and 
fourth  centuries,  demanded  a  place  for  its  central  figure 
that  should  be,  not  in  any  sense  accidental,  but  strictly 
causal.  The  return  of  mankind  to  harmony  with  the 
divine  will  and  law  must  be  accomplished  through  some 
quality  or  some  achievement  peculiar  and  essential  to 
the  personality  of  Christ. 

The  quality  needed  for  this  purpose  was  given  in  the 
doctrine  of  the  deity  of  Christ.  The  achievement  was 
found  in  the  sublime  fact  of  his  sacrifice  for  the  race. 
Given  these  two  factors,  and  the  notion  of  a  redemption 
by  the  personaHty  of  the  God-man  seemed  to  ofTer 
precisely  the  elements  called  for  by  the  awakened  con- 
sciousness of  the  Christian  world.  It  gave  in  the 
clearest  manner  that  aspect  of  causality  without  which 
no  philosophic  explanation  was  conceivable  and  no 
theory  of  continuous  revelation  could  be  made  impres- 
sive. It  satisfied  the  dramatic  requirements  of  justice. 
It  appealed  powerfully  to  the  ever  present  human  in- 
stincts of  gratitude  and  loyalty.  Best  of  all  it  did  not 
make  upon  the  faithful  any  extravagant  demands  either 
of  intelligence  or  of  spiritual  insight.  Once  for  all  it 
rejected  the  aid  of  pure  philosophy  and  placed  a  check 


REDEMPTION  l8l 

upon  the  unregulated  enthusiasms  of  the  ^'prophets"  of 
all  time  to  come. 

The  element  of  chief  importance  in  this  new  scheme 
of  redemption  was  the  idea  of  sacrifice.  Not  that  this 
idea  in  itself  was  new.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  one  of 
the  most  ancient  conceptions  of  the  process  by  which 
a  people  tried  to  put  itself  into  right  relations  with  its 
gods.  To  give  the  thing  most  precious  to  itself,  the 
firstlings  of  its  herds  and  its  crops,  even  the  dearest  of 
its  sons,  was  to  make  the  gods  more  favorable,  to  pro- 
pitiate their  anger  or  to  conciliate  their  good-will.  In 
every  such  act  there  was  impKed  also  the  idea  of  a  sub- 
stitution. The  victim  was,  in  one  sense  or  another,  set 
in  place  of  the  people  who  had  deserved  the  evil  thing 
averted  by  his  sacrifice.  Such  a  notion  of  substitution 
or  representation  was  far  commoner  than  we  of  our 
day  can  really  imagine.  The  wonderful  religious  sys- 
tem of  Egypt,  for  example,  was  permeated  by  it  through- 
out. Its  symbolism  was  not  merely  an  appeal  to  the 
picturesque,  it  was  a  presentation  of  reahties,  more  real 
even  than  the  things  of  sense.  What  we  should  call 
the  world  of  imagination  was  to  the  Egyptian,  as  to  the 
ancient  man  in  general,  the  world  of  reality.  The  sub- 
stitution of  one  being  for  another  was  to  him  as  familiar 
a  process  as  was  the  adoption  of  a  son  into  the  rights 
and  duties  of  actual  sonship. 


i82  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

One  has  to  transport  one's  self  into  this  strange  world 
of  ancient  ideas  to  make  it  clear  how  this  notion  of  sub- 
stitution came  to  attach  itself  to  the  simple  facts  of  the 
death  of  Jesus.  The  historical  element  is  meagre  and 
plain  enough.  A  Hebrew  ''prophet"  in  apparent  re- 
volt against  the  traditions  of  his  own  people,  fell  an 
easy  and  natural  victim  to  popular  and  ofhcial  hatred. 
The  state,  represented  by  a  sceptical,  world-weary,  pro- 
vincial governor,  refused  to  save  him,  and  he  met  bravely, 
with  only  that  touch  of  human  frailty  which  makes 
him  wholly  our  own,  the  fate  he  had  challenged.  That, 
so  far  as  we  know  it,  is  the  whole  story.  Yet  this 
simple  and  heroic  human  act  of  devotion  has  been  in- 
corporated into  that  vast  tissue  of  confusions  we  are  here 
trying  to  understand.  It  follows  the  same  process  of 
distortion  and  entanglement  we  have  seen  in  the  whole 
doctrine  as  to  the  life  of  Jesus.  It  is  at  all  events  a 
fairly  consistent  process.  Just  as  in  the  Hfe  of  the 
Master  the  most  simple  details  became  involved  in  a 
maze  of  philosophic  speculation  until  they  lost  almost 
the  semblance  of  human  experience,  so  here  the  simple, 
majestic  fact  of  a  noble  death  as  the  crown  of  an  heroic 
life  became  obscured  with  a  veil  of  mystical  decoration 
until  it  disappeared  altogether  as  an  historic  fact  and 
became  a  part  in  a  vast  dogmatic  scheme  of  world- 
evolution. 


REDEMPTION  183 

For,  to  follow  the  train  of  our  former  study,  it  was 
not  only  a  man  who  died  upon  the  cross.  It  was  God 
himself  who  thus  made  the  supreme  sacrifice,  offering, 
not  only  what  was  most  precious  to  himself,  —  the  son 
whom  he  had  begotten,  —  but  really  also  offering  him- 
self as  an  atonement  —  to  himself  —  for  the  sin  of  the 
world.  In  all  former  sacrifices  it  had  been  the  people 
through  its  representative,  king  or  priest,  that  had  made 
the  offering,  a  willing  payment  for  the  good  to  be  gained. 
But  here  the  people  were  passive  or  even  hostile.  It 
was  the  power  which  needed  to  be  reconciled  with  his 
disobedient  people  that,  himself,  out  of  the  great  love 
he  bore  them,  made  himself  even  as  they  were  —  except 
the  disobedience  —  and  then,  to  complete  the  recon- 
ciliation, caused  himself  to  die  an  infamous  death.  In 
place  of  the  people  doomed  to  spiritual  death  is  placed 
the  single  sacrificial  offering,  the  sinless  for  the  sinful, 
and  by  this  act  the  world  is  redeemed. 

Such,  in  its  bare  outline  and  without  regard  to  the 
variety  of  detail  in  which  the  ingenuity  of  theologians 
has  involved  it,  is  the  historic  Christian  scheme  of 
redemption.  Intended  to  apply  to  all  men,  it  was  in 
practice  limited  to  such  as  should  accept  it  by  a  half- 
intellectual  and  half-emotional  conviction  of  its  truth. 
A  great  Hterature  and  a  splendid  artistic  development 
were   devoted    to   its   presentation   before   a   believing 


1 84  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

world.  A  priesthood,  with  all  the  characteristics  of  its 
kind,  became  the  mediating  agency  in  applying  the 
*' scheme"  to  the  needs  of  everyday  humanity.  A  sac- 
ramental system  touching  the  life  of  man  at  all  its  most 
impressible  moments  riveted  the  circle  in  which  the 
process  of  redemption  was  to  move.  The  great  revolt 
of  the  sixteenth  century  which  did  away  at  a  stroke 
with  the  worst  bondage  of  the  system,  left  untouched 
the  theory  of  sacrificial  redemption  and  thus  kept  open 
the  way  for  new  and  more  emphatic  demonstrations  of 
its  hold  upon  men's  imagination. 

In  what  attitude  of  mind  can  the  Unitarian  approach 
this  question?  His  first  impulse  is  unquestionably  one 
of  impatient  and  indignant  denial.  He  cannot  accept 
the  foimdation  ideas  upon  which  the  historic  doctrine  of 
redemption  has  been  built  up.  To  him  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  a  God  angry  with  the  race  of  beings  he  has 
created  and  needing  therefore  to  be  reconciled  with  them 
by  some  act  of  propitiation  or  of  expiation.  He  is 
quite  capable  of  understanding  the  heroic  myths  of  the 
ancient  world,  v/here  given  mortals  at  given  moments 
of  distress  are  pictorially  represented  as  devoting  them- 
selves for  their  race  and  thus  bringing  back  the  natural 
relation  with  God,  the  temporary  loss  of  which  has 
brought  misfortune  —  defeat  in  war,  famine,  pestilence, 
or  what  not.     In  such  appealing  forms  he  recognizes  the 


REDEMPTION  185 

expression  of  a  nation's  consciousness  of  wrong  as  sepa- 
rating it  for  the  moment  from  the  divine  sources  of  its 
normal  power.  It  has  ''sinned"  in  some  unknown  way, 
and  it  cannot  recover  without  in  some  fashion  paying 
for  its  sin.  That  is  intelligible.  The  "Jnitarian  under- 
stands it  because  he  beHeves  it  himself  with  all  the  best 
there  is  in  him.  He  is  thoroughly  convinced  that  noth- 
ing can  come  of  nothing;  that  every  valuable  thing, 
most  of  all  the  peace  of  God,  that  harmony  with  the 
law  of  all  Hfe  which  is  the  condition  of  right  living, 
must  be  paid  for,  and  paid  at  a  high  price.  He  knows 
this  to  be  true  of  the  individual  hfe  and  he  believes  it 
equally  for  the  hfe  of  a  nation  or  of  a  race.  There  is 
collective  ''sin"  as  there  is  individual  "sin,"  and  some- 
how that  sin  must  be  atoned  for,  or  the  man,  the  nation, 
the  race  could  not  go  on.  It  would  be  swamped  in  the 
sea  of  its  own  lusts  and  go  imder  to  make  place  for  a 
new  and  law-respecting  generation.  The  attitude  of  the 
thoughtful  Unitarian  toward  the  general  idea  of  re- 
demption is  therefore  not  one  of  scofhng  or  of  mere 
denial.  He  recognizes  in  it  a  profound  need  of  human 
nature.  Nay,  he  will  go  several  steps  farther.  He  will 
admit  that  the  condition  of  rebellion  against  the  divine 
law  is  always  threatening  and  needs  to  be  guarded 
against.  He  beHeves  heartily  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
in  his  teaching  has  furnished  the  key  to  the  problem, 


1 86  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

and  supplied  a  means  whereby  the  individual  and  the 
race  may  secure  the  form  of  redemption  best  suited  to 
their  need.  Further,  he  beheves,  as  the  Church  has 
always  done,  that  the  process  of  redemption  must  be 
continuous  —  renewed  from  point  to  point  in  the  growth 
of  the  man  as  of  the  community.  He  sees  in  the  sacra- 
mental system  of  the  Church  a  representation  —  to 
him  a  heathen  and  mechanical  representation  —  of  a 
perfectly  sound  and  widely  useful  idea. 

What  he  denies  is  that  at  any  specific  time,  by  any 
specific  method,  the  relation  of  God  to  his  world  was 
changed.  As  he  denies  the  specifically  and  peculiarly 
divine  character  of  Jesus,  so  he  must  deny  the  possi- 
bility of  any  mysterious  influence  upon  the  race  arising 
from  that  character.  The  whole  argument  from  the 
sacrificial  death  of  a  divine  personality  seems  to  him 
only  so  many  empty  words,  signifying  nothing  unless 
they  be  taken  in  senses  contrary  to  any  rational  mean- 
ing. He  understands  —  no  one  better  —  the  thought  of 
Jesus  giving  up  his  life  gladly  for  a  truth  that  was  more 
to  him  than  Kfe.  It  is  a  great  and  inspiring  thought; 
one  that  may  become  fruitful,  as  it  has  done,  in  the 
struggle  of  right  with  wrong  whenever  a  brave  soul  has 
faced  the  alternative  and  chosen  pain  and  loss  and  death 
rather  than  dishonor.  He  sees  how  this  brave  death 
may   have   reacted   upon   the   scattered   and   doubting 


REDEMPTION  187 

followers,  confirming  them  in  their  allegiance  and  kindling 
in  them  something  of  the  divine  fire  that  had  burned  in 
the  heart  of  their  Master.  The  Unitarian  rejoices  in 
all  this  because  he  sees  in  it  one  more  demonstration 
of  the  power  there  is  in  a  human  life.  If  that  hfe  were 
not  in  every  sense  human  as  his  own,  he  can  see  no 
point  of  contact  at  which  power  could  pass  from  it  into 
his.  It  would  be  as  far  removed  from  all  vital  con- 
nection with  him  as  ever  were  the  gods  and  demigods 
of  the  Greek  mythology.  But,  beheving  as  he  does 
that  what  was  possible  for  one  inspired  human  soul  is 
in  substance  possible  for  another,  he  draws  hope  and 
courage  from  this  great  example.  Beheving  as  he  does 
that  the  only  effective  teaching  can  come  from  one  who 
has  himself  learned  by  experience  the  lessons  he  tries 
to  teach,  he  is  able  to  make  his  own  the  lessons  of  the 
greatest  of  moral  teachers. 

Again,  the  Unitarian  is  not  impressed  by  the  emphasis 
laid  upon  the  fact  of  death  as  such.  He  repudiates  as 
childish  superstition  the  notion  of  physical  death  as  the 
punishment  of  the  race  for  that  ''sin"  of  its  first  parents 
whereby  they  became  acquainted  with  the  fact  of  their 
physical  function  as  progenitors  of  the  race.  To  call 
that  ''sin"  seems  to  him  the  profanation  of  everything 
that  should  be  kept  holy  in  the  thoughts  of  men  about 
their  place  in  the  universe  of  things.     He  sympathizes 


1 88  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

heartily  with  a  recent  poet  who  represents  the  ancient 
Eve,  worn  with  years  and  sorrow,  wandering  back 
again  to  the  garden  of  Eden  and  there,  moving  in  mystic 
measures  around  the  fateful  tree,  telling  God  how,  in 
her  heart  of  hearts,  she  was  glad  she  did  it.  He  had 
made  her  woman,  and  what  she  did  was  done  in 
obedience  to  the  law  he  had  laid  upon  her  by  her 
womanhood.  It  was  not  behevable  that  he  could  have 
willed  her  to  be  what  he  had  made  her  not  to  be. 

Death  is  to  the  Unitarian  only  the  natural  and  in- 
evitable and  therefore  the  right  and  happy  corollary  of 
life.  If  there  were  no  death,  there  could  be  no  room  for 
life.  He  sees,  of  course,  that  in  this  struggling  world 
death  wears  many  painful  shapes;  but  he  sees  in  this 
only  the  natural  consequence  of  struggle.  All  life,  from 
the  simplest  to  the  most  complicated  forms,  is  main- 
tained only  at  the  cost  of  continual  conflict.  Even  the 
blade  of  grass  has  to  fight  for  its  life  against  drought 
and  flood  and  starvation  and  the  crushing  tread  of  men 
and  animals.  If  it  survives  all  these  and  does  its  ser- 
vice in  feeding  the  flower  that  is  to  give  the  promise 
of  new  life  in  the  seed,  then  it  dies  like  the  man  who 
has  conquered,  full  of  years  and  honor,  his  work  done, 
his  release  granted.  There  is  nothing  in  all  this  that 
in  the  least  suggests  the  idea  of  physical  death  as  a 
means  of  attaining  spiritual  life.     The  analogy  is  false. 


REDEMPTION  189 

It  is  a  mere  playing  with  words  to  say  that  the  death 
of  Jesus  restores  the  balance  of  humanity  and  Deity  that 
was  lost  by  the  ''fall"  of  Adam.  No  matter  into  what 
modern  equivalents  the  language  of  the  ancient  Hebrew 
cosmic  myth  may  be  rendered,  there  is  no  room  for  any 
such  idea  in  Unitarian  thought.  The  alternation  of 
death  and  hfe  is  continuous  and  natural.  It  has  no 
such  dramatic  moments  as  are  needed  to  complete  the 
plot  of  the  so-called  Christian  scheme. 

So  it  is,  again,  with  the  notion  of  a  vicarious  atone- 
ment, the  sacrifice  of  one  for  the  sin  of  all.  Before  that 
idea,  as  before  hardly  any  other  in  the  historic  Christian 
entanglement,  the  Unitarian  stands  in  blank  incompre- 
hension. It  is  perfectly  clear  to  him  that  the  heroism 
which  inspires  a  voluntary  sacrifice  of  pleasant  things 
for  a  greater  good  to  others  is  contagious  —  fruitful  in 
results  of  faith  and  courage,  perhaps  to  generations  of 
men.  In  that  fact  he  sees  one  of  the  chief  glories  of 
human  nature,  that  it  is  capable  of  recognizing  such 
leadership  and  of  following  it  to  even  greater  triumphs. 
It  is  the  bond  that  ties  together  the  choice  spirits  of  all 
the  generations  in  one  continuous  succession  of  noble 
ideals  and  at  least  partial  realizations.  But  what  gives 
to  each  generation  and  to  each  individual  its  power  to 
meet  the  forces  of  evil  is  not  merely  the  power  of  the 


I  go  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

age  or  the  man  that  has  gone  before.  From  that  or 
from  him  it  receives  inspiration  and  support,  but  its 
force  comes  from  the  enUghtened  and  disciplined  will, 
which  is  its  own.  The  sacrifices  that  went  before  avail 
nothing  except  as  each  man,  in  his  own  day,  wins  for 
himself  his  victories  over  his  own  temptation.  The 
whole  conception  of  the  sin  of  one  man  being  atoned 
for  by  the  virtue  of  another,  the  Unitarian  repudiates 
with  the  same  repulsion  he  feels  at  the  idea  that  the  sin 
of  one  man  can  be  imputed  as  sinfulness  to  the  whole 
race  of  men  follo^ving  after.  The  two  ends  of  the  circle 
of  so-called  Christian  theology  seem  to  him  to  prove 
alike  the  viciousness  of  the  circle  itself.  The  doctrine 
of  a  ''fall"  and  of  a  sacrificial  redemption  alike  contra- 
dict his  primary  and  fundamental  notions  of  human 
nature.  On  the  one  hand  he  asserts  as  positively  as 
words  can  do  it  the  capacity  of  man  to  do  what  is  right 
in  the  sight  of  God.  On  the  other,  he  asserts  with  equal 
positiveness  man's  power  to  maintain  his  own  at-one- 
ment  with  God.  To  him  the  processes  both  of  estrange- 
ment and  of  at-one-ment  go  on  in  every  human  life  con- 
tinuously and  will  go  on  so  long  as  men  are  men.  There 
wall  always  be  shortcoming;  but  there  will  always  be 
effective  reparation.  If  there  were  no  shortcoming, 
men  would  be  angels ;  if  there  were  no  reparation,  they 
would  become  devils.     That,   to   the  Unitarian  is  the 


REDEMPTION  191 

very  definition  of  life.  It  is  not  to  him  a  degrading 
thought  that  Hfe  is  a  struggle.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  in 
the  very  fact  of  struggle  that  he  finds  the  glory  of  life. 
The  degrading  conception  to  him  is  that  by  the  act  of 
any  other  being  man  should  be  relieved  of  any  fragment 
of  the  responsibility  that  is  his  birthright.  To  have 
been  bought  off  from  the  consequences  of  his  own  wrong 
by  the  sacrifice  of  some  one  else  appears  to  him  a  mean- 
ness that  in  common  life  would  be  branded  with  the 
scorn  of  every  high-minded  man. 

We  are  thus  led  by  perfectly  natural  steps  to  the 
positive  Unitarian  doctrine  of  redemption.  Against  the 
traditional  notions  of  a  race  rebellion,  whereby  man  be- 
came incapable  of  acting  in  harmony  with  the  divine 
will,  Unitarians  place  the  idea  of  a  continuous  develop- 
ment of  the  sense  of  righteousness  through  the  free  will 
of  man  —  free,  that  is,  to  do  right  as  well  as  wrong. 
To  the  traditional  doctrine  of  a  single  race-restoration 
by  means  of  a  sacrifice  on  the  part  of  a  man  who  was 
at  the  same  time  God,  Unitarians  oppose  the  idea  of  a 
continuous  victory  of  right  over  wrong,  whereby  the 
race  is  held  to  some  attainable  standard  of  harmony 
with  the  divine  will.  For  this  process  of  continuous 
restoration  they  have  the  word  ^'Redemption  by  Char- 
acter.''' They  think  here  primarily  of  individual  char- 
acter and  apply  that  phrase  to  the  race  only  as  it  is 


192  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

made  up  of  individuals.  The  older  theology  thought 
on  this  matter  in  terms  of  race  and  dealt  with  indi- 
viduals chiefly  as  incidents  or  specimens  of  race  com- 
pact or  race  endowment. 

Unitarianism,  here  as  elsewhere,  proceeds  from  the  in- 
dividual to  the  general.  It  conceives  of  individual  char- 
racter  as  the  resultant  of  all  the  forces  making  for  a 
permanent  inclination  of  the  whole  being  towards  a 
certain  ideal.  Character  may  be  good  or  bad  according 
as  this  inclination  be  chiefly  toward  harmony  with  the 
divine  will  or  chiefly  away  from  it.  Character  includes 
not  merely  what  theologians  are  wont  to  call,  a  Kttle 
contemptuously,  "mere  morality."  It  covers  all  that 
complex  of  motives  whereby  the  thoughts,  feelings,  and 
actions  of  a  man  are  habitually  governed.  It  is  the  man 
himself  as  he  meets  the  daily  and  hourly  demands  of  his 
inner  and  his  outward  life.  If  we  could  imagine  a  man 
who  allowed  himself  no  thought,  no  emotion,  and  no  ac- 
tion that  was  not  in  obedience  to  his  own  highest  concep- 
tion of  the  divine  law,  we  should  say  of  such  a  man  that 
he  had  a  ''perfect"  character.  Now  the  older  theology 
would  not  accept  such  a  man  as  coming  under  the 
Christian  principle  of  redemption  unless  he  could  show 
in  addition  some  mxystical  influence  of  the  sacrifice  of 
Christ.  Unitarianism  declares  that  this  adjustment  of 
the  will  to  the  standard  of  the  divine  is  precisely  what 


REDEMPTION  193 

constitutes  the  following  of  Christ  in  its  largest  and 
truest  sense.  The  character  thus  gained  and  proven 
and  held  fast  is  redemption.  There  is  no  other  worthy 
definition  of  the  word.  It  is  the  redemption  of  a  man's 
lower  self  by  the  domination  of  his  higher  self.  It  is 
the  spiritual  redeeming  the  material,  the  divine  that  is  in 
every  man  redeeming  the  animal.  Or,  to  turn  the  pro- 
cess about,  character  is  redemption  because  it  has  paid 
the  price  of  victory.  It  has  cost  much,  and  that  to  the 
soul  that  is  redeemed.  This  soul  has  paid  its  own 
price,  the  price  of  continual  watchfulness,  of  unfailing 
hope,  of  unflinching  courage,  of  a  faith  that  could  not 
be  shaken.  The  mendicant  attitude  which  society, 
when  freed  from  clerical  control,  has  rejected  in  the 
affairs  of  the  world,  the  Unitarian  refuses  also  to  adopt 
in  matters  of  the  soul.  He  finds  the  closest  connection 
of  ideas  between  the  sturdy  beggary  that  still  dogs  the 
traveller  in  the  streets  of  Rome  and  the  expiatory  per- 
formances of  ^'Holy  Week."  He  who  is  promised  some- 
thing for  nothing  in  religion  may  be  pardoned  for  try- 
ing the  same  process  in  his  daily  life. 

From  the  conception  of  redemption  by  character  in 
the  individual  the  Unitarian  goes  on  naturally  to  the 
thought  of  redemption  for  the  race  as  a  whole.  The 
solution  here  is  pointed  out  in  advance  by  his  notion  of 


194  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  race  as  made  up  of  individuals.  The  point  may 
seem  at  first  alike  obscure  and  unimportant.  It  may 
seem  quite  a  matter  of  indifference  to  the  plain  think- 
ing man  whether  he  approaches  the  thought  of  mankind 
as  made  up  of  individual  men  or  whether  he  is  to  think 
of  the  individual  as  being  merely  a  specimen  of  the 
genus  "man."  The  reader  who  has  learned  something 
of  the  terminology  of  the  philosophic  schools  will  recog- 
nize, however,  that  we  are  speaking  here  of  one  of  the 
most  profound  distinctions  in  the  whole  field  of  human 
thought.  As  a  mere  matter  of  history,  it  has  made  all 
the  difference  in  the  world  whether  men  at  given  times 
have  been  in  the  habit  of  starting  in  their  thought  from 
the  individual  observed  fact,  and  proceeding  from  that 
to  generalize  about  classes,  species,  genera^  or  however 
else  we  may  describe  aggregations  of  individuals,  or 
whether  they  have  been  accustomed  to  start  with  the 
larger  general  ideas  and  work  down  to  the  individual. 
It  would  lead  us  too  far  into  the  field  of  philosophy  if 
we  were  to  try  to  make  this  distinction  clear  in  all  its 
bearings,  but  we  must  remember  that  philosophy  is 
only  a  large  word  to  describe  the  mental  processes  we 
are  all  following,  whether  we  know  it  or  not,  and  the 
distinction  we  have  come  to  here  is  one  that  determines 
the  thought  of  us  all  —  even  though  we  may  be  as  in- 
nocent of  philosophy  as  M.  Jourdain  was  of  prose.     We 


REDEMPTION 


195 


have  already  had  occasion  to  remark  on  the  tendency  of 
Christian  theology  at  all  times  to  proceed  from  the 
general  to  the  particular.  It  has  rested  upon  a  series 
of  dogmas,  the  very  essence  of  which  was  that  they 
were  abstract  propositions  based  upon  no  experience 
whatever,  —  defying  all  experience  and  demanding  alle- 
giance in  virtue  of  their  absolute  truth,  without  refer- 
ence to  individual  judgment  or  individual  right  at  all. 
From  this  point  of  view  the  individual  man  was  merely 
an  incident  in  a  vast  world-process  that  absorbed  him 
in  its  greater  life.  He  himself  disappeared,  submerged 
in  the  many  classifications  into  which  the  course  of 
human  development  had  grouped  him.  Family,  clan, 
nation,  state,  guild,  Church,  —  these,  especially  the  last, 
were  the  headings  under  which  the  individual  found 
himself  ranged  and  outside  of  which  he  stood  in  a  hope- 
less isolation. 

It  cannot,  of  course,  be  denied  that  such  classification 
is  in  the  highest  degree  useful  in  fixing  the  function  of 
the  individual  as  a  member  of  the  human  family.  It  is 
only  in  these  several  relations  that  a  man  comes  to  the 
realization  of  himself  as  a  man.  That  is  not  our  present 
point.  What  concerns  us  now  is  the  value  of  the  in- 
dividual in  determining  the  process  of  race  redemption. 
According  to  the  method  we  have  just  outlined  as  that 
of  the  prevailing  Christian  theology,  the  individual  can 


196  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

hardly  be  thought  of  as  having  any  part  at  all  in  this 
process.  It  is  all  a  matter  of  race  compacts,  race  sacri- 
fice, atonement  for  the  race.  All  that  was  really  de- 
manded of  the  individual  was  that  he  should  accept  the 
terms.  The  wildest  heathen,  whose  Hfe  had  been  one 
long  series  of  bloody  deeds,  was  adopted  into  this  race 
atonement  if  only  he  declared  his  willingness  to  accept 
membership  in  a  compact  that  seemed  to  offer  him  an 
imlimited  prospect  of  further  savagery  under  more 
promising  auspices.  The  noblest  pagan,  pattern  of  all 
the  virtues  most  lauded  as  peculiarly  Christian,  was 
excluded  from  the  race  atonement  because  he  had  not 
sacrificed  his  individuahty  and  come  under  the  class 
dictation  of  a  priesthood  that  had  assumed  to  control 
the  relations  of  men  with  God. 

Unitarianism  proceeds  by  precisely  the  opposite 
method.  It  fixes  its  attention  primarily  upon  the 
individual.  It  does  not  conceive  of  a  man  merely  as  an 
incident  in  the  world-mechanism.  It  knows  that  he  is 
that,  but  it  thinks  of  him  as  related  to  the  world  process 
through  the  working  out  of  his  own  individuality.  It 
has  its  own  lofty  conceptions  of  the  function  of  the 
family,  the  state,  the  Church,  mankind  even,  in  bring- 
ing about  that  development  which  is  to  it  the  ultimate 
goal  of  humanity.  It  feels  the  force  of  the  reaction  of 
all  these  upon  the  individual  as  fixing  his  aims,  setting 


REDEMPTION  1 97 

his  limitations,  giving  him  his  opportunities;  but  still 
more  powerfully  it  feels  that  these  larger  entities  have 
meaning  and  value  only  as  they  are  fixed  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  individuals  who  compose  them.  What  is 
the  family  ?  It  is  an  aggregate  of  persons  held  together 
by  the  tie  of  blood,  that  children  may  know  their  parents 
and  be  cared  for  by  them;  that  the  aged  may  be  saved 
from  misery;  that  the  collective  property  may  be  held 
together  and  guarded  and  thus  a  centre  for  new  human 
activities  be  created  and  maintained.  But  what  if  the 
man  will  not  work,  the  woman  will  not  save,  the  chil- 
dren will  not  learn  and,  as  they  come  to  years,  will  not 
bear  their  share  of  the  collective  burden?  Then  the 
family,  instead  of  being  a  true  unit  in  the  world's  economy, 
breaks  up  into  a  mere  group  of  individuals  each  seeking 
his  own  pleasure  in  his  own  way.  Its  effectiveness  as  a 
social  and  moral  unit  depends  absolutely  upon  the 
fidelity  of  each  member  to  the  highest  standards  of  in- 
dividual character.  So  it  is  with  the  state.  What  is 
that  but  a  larger  aggregation  of  persons  bound  by  the 
tie  of  common  economic  and  social  interests  so  that 
right  may  be  secured,  needed  public  works  undertaken, 
peace  and  liberty  guaranteed  by  force,  and  the  higher 
ideal  aims  of  humanity  fostered?  But  what  if  the  in- 
dividual citizen  refuses  to  play  his  part;  if  he  will  not 
enter  into  public  life;   will  not  give  voice  and  vote  for 


198  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  best  things?  Or  what  if  rulers  see  in  power  only  a 
means  to  self-aggrandizement,  or  if  subjects  refuse  to 
bear  the  burdens  laid  upon  them  by  their  rulers,  or  if 
men  deliberately  seek  to  corrupt  the  public  conscience 
by  appealing  to  the  lowest  instead  of  the  highest  in- 
stincts of  humanity  ?  Then  the  state  means  nothing 
but  a  mere  mechanical  union  that  will  break  as  soon 
as  pressure  comes  on  a  weak  point.  It  will  resolve  itself 
into  groups  of  struggling  individuals  without  order,  with- 
out progress,  and  without  aims. 

And  it  is  the  same  with  the  Church.  That  too  is  a 
community  of  persons  held  together  by  the  tie  of  a 
common  faith.  It  exists  in  order  that  that  faith  may  be 
kept  alive  and  may  manifest  itself  in  works  that  make 
for  righteousness.  It  claims  to  stand  within  all  other 
forms  of  human  organization  as  their  inspiring,  uplift- 
ing, spiritualizing  force.  It  demands,  as  no  other  asso- 
ciation of  men  does,  the  absolute  surrender  of  its  mem- 
bers to  its  ideals  and  its  purposes.  But  what  if  the 
individual  man  is  lacking  in  that  personal  faith  that  is 
the  very  foundation  of  a  religious  life;  if  he  just  slips 
along  easily  in  the  ready  forms  of  observance,  repeating 
words  and  formulas  he  does  not  really  believe,  going 
through  the  motions  of  religion  without  the  inner  im- 
pulse that  must  give  unity  and  continuity  to  his  ex- 
periences?    Or  what  if  those  who,  by  the  accidents  of 


REDEMPTION  199 

history,  have  come  into  control  of  religious  organization 
and  who  direct  the  forms  of  religious  experience  come 
to  think  of  themselves  as  having  rights  superior  to 
those  of  other  beHevers;  if  they  impose  their  ordina- 
tions, their  sacraments,  their  organized  ignorance  and 
superstition  upon  their  less  well- trained  brothers;  if 
they  would  harness  the  Holy  Spirit  into  the  service  of 
their  own  caste  and  crush  every  attempt  of  unauthorized 
desire  to  come  to  the  sources  of  spiritual  life  without 
their  aid  ?  Then  the  Church  ceases  to  be  a  true  and 
effective  unit  in  the  Hfe  of  the  community.  Its  mem- 
bers will  become  mere  mechanical,  inorganic  atoms 
without  real  satisfaction  for  themselves  or  usefulness  to 
others.  The  Church  can  have  a  meaning  only  as  each 
individual  member  is  honest  in  his  belief,  free  in  his 
conscience,  steadfast  in  well-doing  and  brave  in  meeting 
the  assaults  of  temptation.  If  he  is  all  these,  then  the 
Church  is  strong.  If  weakness  and  selfishness  and  cor- 
ruption creep  in,  then  the  corrupt  Church,  like  the 
corrupt  family  or  state,  has  no  meaning  that  the  world 
is  bound  to  respect. 

Now  that  is  what  we  mean  when  we  say  that  the 
Unitarian  fixes  his  attention  above  all  things  on  the 
individual.  He  knows  well  enough  the  reactions  that 
may  come  to  every  man  from  the  larger  units  in  which 
he  is  involved.     It  is  a  good  thing  to  belong  to  a  family 


200  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

that  has  a  good  name  for  doing  well  the  things  for 
which  the  family  stands  in  the  world's  work.  It  gives 
to  the  man  a  background  for  effort  and  a  reason  for 
hope  and  courage.  It  is  a  help  to  be  born  in  a  city 
where  high  ideals  of  public  life  prevail  and  a  man's 
own  effort  is  carried  along  with  the  current  of  popular 
approval.  It  sustains  one's  faith  to  know  that  it  is 
shared  by  a  great  association  which  speaks  to  the  in- 
dividual with  the  weight  of  precedent  and  the  sanctity 
of  an  honorable  past.  But  the  very  essence  of  this 
reaction  of  the  institution  upon  the  individual  comes  in 
every  case  from  the  same  source,  namely,  from  the 
accumulated  power  of  earlier  individuals  who  have  made 
the  institution  worth  having.  Let  the  individual  fall 
back  upon  the  institution  as  the  real  basis  of  his  own 
relation  to  the  world;  let  him  once  say:  ''Because  I 
belong  to  this  family,  or  to  this  city,  ot  to  this  Church, 
therefore  I  can  afford  to  allow  myself  a  relaxation  of 
diligence  which  would  be  unsafe  for  another,"  and  he  is 
lost.  The  value  of  membership  in  the  community  is 
realized  only  when  it  is  paid  for  by  the  steady  main- 
tenance of  the  value  of  every  member. 

So  it  is  that  the  Unitarian  reaches  his  doctrine  of  a 
race  redemption.  It  is  to  his  mind  no  process  of  fatal- 
istic rotation,  so  that,  after  passing  through  certain 
mystic  ''cycles"  of  advancement,  the  race  shall  be  re- 


REDEMPTION  20I 

volved  around  into  the  condition  of  perfection  in  which 
it  started.  Nor  is  it  a  process  prescribed  at  any  one 
given  moment  of  human  progress,  set  going  by  any  one 
event,  or  completed  under  the  direction  of  any  human 
organization,  even  though  that  organization  claims  to  be 
divine.  The  redemption  of  the  race  comes  only  through 
the  redemption  of  individuals,  and  that  comes  only 
through  the  redeeming  force  of  personal  character.  It 
is  not  a  culmination  in  time,  such  as  we  have  been 
accustomed  to  imagine.  The  Unitarian  does  not  look 
either  backward  or  forward  to  an  age  of  general  and 
universal  acquiescence  in  the  will  of  God.  His  golden 
age  is  not  to  be  found  in  any  Garden  of  Eden  where 
men  were  not  yet  men,  nor  in  any  New  Jerusalem 
where  they  shall  be  no  longer  men.  His  golden  age  of 
humanity  is  found  wherever,  in  the  conflict  of  the 
world,  right  prevails  over  wrong,  light  over  darkness, 
truth  over  falsehood,  love  over  hate.  Every  man  at 
once  contributes  to  and  shares  in  the  race  redemption 
when  he,  in  his  own  personal  conflict,  comes  out  vic- 
torious. He  is  never  so  far  redeemed  that  he  is  exempted 
from  that  law  of  struggle  which  is  the  law  of  all  life; 
neither  is  the  race  ever  redeemed  beyond  the  need  of 
continual  defence  against  temptation  to  wrong. 

This  conclusion  will  perhaps  to  many  persons  have  a 
painful  sound,   as  implying  an  incompleteness,   a  one- 


202  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

sidedness  in  the  scheme  of  things  which  they  cannot 
associate  with  the  idea  of  a  well-ordered  universe.  The 
Unitarian  does  not  take  that  view  of  it,  because  to  him 
there  is  nothing  depressing  in  the  notion  of  incomplete- 
ness. He  does  not  accept  the  law  of  struggle  as  a  gloomy 
misfortune  to  be  taken  in  a  spirit  of  resignation  or  de- 
spair. On  the  contrary,  the  law  of  struggle  seems  to 
him  the  law  of  happiness.  The  depressing  thought  to 
him  is  the  idea  of  completeness,  —  of  a  perfection  that 
should  leave  nothing  more  to  be  done ;  no  heights  to 
climb,  no  battles  to  win,  no  weakness  to  be  overcome, 
no  distress  to  be  relieved.  It  would  be  to  him  like  the 
wretchedness  of  the  very  rich,  to  whom,  because  all 
satisfactions  are  witliin  reach  no  true  satisfaction  is 
possible.  Redemption  by  Character,  first  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  then,  through  the  natural  groupings  of  in- 
dividuals, of  society  as  a  whole;  this  is  the  ideal  that 
to  the  Unitarian  embodies  the  most  elevating,  the  most 
stimulating,  and  the  most  rewarding  of  human  concep- 
tions. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  CHURCH 

One  holy  Church  of  God  appears 

Through  every  age  and  race, 
Unwasted  by  the  lapse  of  years, 

Unchanged  by  changing  place. 

—  Samuel  Longfellow. 

There  are  three  conceptions  of  the  Christian  Church, 
which  at  different  times  have  determined  its  form,  have 
influenced  its  doctrines,  and  greatly  affected  its  value  to 
mankind.  Within  these  three  principal  ideas  there 
have  been  infinite  diversities  of  detail;  but,  for  our 
present  purpose,  the  definition  of  Unitarian  thought 
about  the  Church,  this  threefold  distinction  will  suffice. 
For  the  sake  of  simplicity,  we  may  use  the  words  Eso- 
teric, Catholic,  and  Individualistic  to  express  what  is 
most  characteristic  in  each.  It  may  be  said  with  truth 
that  the  ultimate  purpose  of  the  Church  under  all  of 
these  divergent  forms  is  the  same.  It  is  the  advance- 
ment of  humanity  toward  the  final  consummation  of  the 
Christian  ideal  as  expressed  in  the  supreme  vision  of  a 
"kingdom  of  God."  As  to  this  ultimate  purpose  there 
can  be  no  important  difference  among  the  many  divi- 
sions into  which  the  Church  has  always  fallen.     The 

203 


204  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

divisions  have  taken  place  according  to  that  law  of  all 
human  things  whereby  men  left  to  themselves  will  in- 
evitably differ  as  to  the  best  means  of  attaining  a  com- 
mon end.  It  is  a  law  not  to  be  deplored,  but  to  be 
utilized.  In  obedience  to  it  is  found  the  liberty  of  the 
sons  of  God.  Defiance  of  it  begets  subtly  but  surely  the 
twin  spirits  of  servility  and  oppression.  Honest  thought 
has  always  produced  divisions.  It  is  by  division  that 
the  main  organism  has  been  strengthened;  as  a  plant, 
whose  roots  have  become  so  hopelessly  entangled  as  to 
force  out  the  Hfe-giving  earth,  recovers  vitality  by  being 
divided  and  thus  brought  again  into  contact  with  the 
sources  of  its  Kfe.  The  life  of  the  Church  has  not  been 
exempt  from  this  universal  law.  From  the  beginning  it 
has  followed  certain  fairly  well-marked  lines  of  division, 
and  these  have  resulted  in  the  threefold  distinction  we 
have  laid  down. 

Let  us  examine  a  little  more  carefully  the  three  terms 
we  have  employed  to  express  these  divisions.  The  eso- 
teric idea  of  the  Church  implies  the  notion  of  a  twofold 
membership.  In  such  a  Church  there  is  an  ordinary 
membership  for  the  great  bulk  of  its  constituents  and  a 
special  membership  for  an  inner  circle  of  elect  spirits. 
The  qualification  for  admission  to  this  inner  circle  may 
be  of  any  imaginable  sort.  In  fact  it  has  usually  been 
determined  on  one  or  the  other  of  two  decisive  grounds. 


THE   CHURCH  205 

Its  basis  has  been  either  an  intellectual  or  a  spiritual  one. 
In  either  case  the  elect  members  were  supposed  to  be 
persons  of  highly  superior  endowment  or  training,  or 
both.  They  constituted  an  elite  of  the  intellect  or  of 
the  spirit  in  such  a  commanding  sense  that  to  them  and 
to  them  alone  could  safely  be  entrusted  the  occult  some- 
thing, to  preserve  which  was  the  main  purpose  of  the 
Church  itself.  Hardly  had  the  Church  begun  to  be 
conscious  of  its  own  existence  when  these  distinctions 
began  to  make  themselves  felt.  In  the  long  effort  to 
determine  just  how  the  new  thought  of  Christians  should 
express  itself,  groups  of  choice  spirits  —  the  ''best 
minds,"  as  we  should  say  —  imagined  that  they  could 
work  out  a  philosophic  system  superior  to  all  the  an- 
cient philosophies,  that  would  once  for  all  replace  them 
and  satisfy  the  new  demand.  These  were  the  "know- 
ing ones,"  the  Gnostics,  as  they  called  themselves.  They 
were  soon  divided  under  various  forms,  but  were  united 
in  this  one  central  idea  of  an  occult  doctrine  to  be  em- 
bodied in  a  special  company  of  the  intellectually  elect 
who  constituted  the  truest  part  of  the  true  Church. 
With  their  doctrines  we  are  not  concerned;  only  with 
their  idea  as  to  the  outward  structure  of  the  visible 
Church. 

It  was,  further,  quite  consistent  with  this  manifesta- 
tion —  the   same   thing  has   happened   over   and  over 


206  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

again  in  the  history  of  human  thought  —  that  parallel 
with  this  intellectual  esotericism  there  should  grow  up 
also  another  esotericism  of  the  emotions.  As  in  the 
one  case  there  was  an  inner  circle  of  experts  distinguished 
by  learning  and  philosophic  skill,  so  in  the  other  case 
there  was  an  inner  circle  of  specially  endowed  spiritual 
persons.  Their  insight  into  truth  came  not  from  an 
intellectual  process,  but  from  that  kind  of  direct  reveal- 
ing which  expressed  itself  by  the  word  ''prophecy." 
An  accident  of  history  caused  these  views  of  the  "pro- 
phetic" Church  to  be  known  as  Montanism,  and  so  they 
have  been  called  ever  since  in  their  many  reappearances 
from  then  till  now.  Their  essential  kinship  with  the 
Gnostic  views,  so  far  as  the  nature  of  the  Church  is 
concerned,  is  evident.  If  either  or  both  of  these  tend- 
encies had  prevailed,  we  should  have  had  a  Church 
essentially  divided  into  the  two  permanent  classes  of 
the  initiated  and  the  uninitiated.  There  would  have 
been  an  aristocracy  of  the  intellect  or  of  the  spirit  and, 
over  against  this,  the  mass  of  average  Christians,  im- 
perfect in  their  comprehension,  limited  as  to  their  share 
in  the  Christian  life  on  earth  and  equally  limited  in  its 
final  rewards. 

Against  this  conception  of  the  Church  as  a  secret 
society  of  perfectionists  either  in  doctrine  or  in  practice 
was  made  the  splendid  protest  of  the  early  and  true 


THE  CHURCH  207 

Catholicism.  The  Catholic  position  was  that,  in  har- 
mony with  the  nature  of  man  as  an  imperfect  being, 
any  such  distinction  of  endowment  could  not  be  made 
the  basis  of  a  permanent  classification  of  Christian  be- 
lievers. At  any  given  moment,  to  be  sure,  there  were 
obvious  differences  among  men  in  these  respects;  but, 
since  the  work  of  Christ  had  been  for  all  men  alike, 
these  differences  were  only  accidental,  not  essential. 
The  Church  consisted  of  all  men,  perfect  or  imperfect, 
—  or,  rather,  there  were  none  perfect  either  in  knowledge 
or  in  life,  and  the  work  of  the  Church  was  to  educate 
men  up  constantly  from  a  lower  to  a  higher  grade  of 
spiritual  thinking  and  living.  Every  person  properly 
received  into  the  Christian  membership  was  a  full  mem- 
ber entitled  to  share  in  all  its  privileges  and  subject  to 
all  its  responsibihties.  That  was  the  orginal  Catholi- 
cism. It  was  an  idea  full  of  significance  for  the  future. 
If  it  could  have  been  maintained  in  this  early  purity, 
the  history  of  Christianity  would  have  been  different. 
That  it  was  not  so  maintained  is  one  of  the  common- 
places of  reHgious  history.  The  idea  itself  was,  indeed, 
never  lost.  It  remained  to  restrain  and  at  times  to 
justify  the  action  of  organized  Catholicism;  but,  as  the 
Church  came  to  be  identified  with  society  as  a  whole, 
the  principle  of  universality  became  a  principle  of 
tyranny.     Divergence  from  the  doctrine  or  the  practice 


2o8  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

of  the  Church  in  ever  so  slight  a  degree  became  rebellion 
against  a  divine  order.  Individuality,  either  of  the  in- 
tellect or  of  the  spirit,  became  the  worst  of  crimes,  pun- 
ishable by  exclusion  from  privileges  here,  which  entailed 
exclusion  from  the  rewards  of  the  life  to  come.  While 
the  Church  still  declared  its  mission  to  be  the  education 
of  the  race  to  higher  spiritual  standards,  it  ignored  the 
law  which  makes  the  education  of  the  whole  dependent 
upon  the  free  development  of  the  individual.  The 
Church,  from  being  the  schoolmaster,  became,  as  unwise 
schoolmasters  have  too  often  become,  a  tyrant,  drawing 
absolute  hues  within  which  the  human  spirit  might 
move,  but  beyond  which  lay  disaster. 

Happily,  however,  the  human  spirit  will  not  be  kept 
down.  The  protest  against  this  perversion  of  the  true 
function  of  Catholicism  was  never  wanting.  It  re- 
quired centuries  before  that  individuality  which  is  of 
the  essence  of  the  ancient  Greco-Roman  civilization 
could  be  repressed.  Even  then,  when,  in  the  decline  of 
the  ancient  culture,  the  control  of  thought  had  passed 
into  the  hands  of  a  dominant  priesthood,  keen,  as  priest- 
hoods ever  have  been,  to  seize  its  own  advantage  and 
ally  itself  with  physical  force  to  accomplish  its  divine 
mission,  —  even  in  the  darkest  times  of  the  miscalled 
''ages  of  faith,"  the  record  of  silent,  courageous  protest 
is  unbroken.     The  Reformation,  from  the  fourteenth  cen- 


THE  CHURCH  209 

tury  on,  is  but  the  cry  of  this  protest  becoming  articulate 
once  more  in  the  voices  of  men  who  were  not  afraid  to 
go  back  to  what  they  conceived  to  be  the  pure  sources 
of  Christian  thought  and  practice.  The  Reformation 
was  not  the  proclamation  of  new  doctrines,  nor  the 
foundation  of  new  practices.  It  was  the  protest  against 
the  idea  of  a  Church  which  had  come  to  obscure  thought 
and  make  of  practice  a  mere  mechanical  repetition  of 
vain  things. 

In  the  reconstructions  of  the  Reformation  it  was  in- 
evitable that  the  same  old  antagonisms  that  had  marked 
the  beginnings  of  Christianity  should  declare  themselves 
again.  Once  more  the  threefold  alternative  of  the 
esoteric,  the  universal,  and  the  individualistic  presented 
itself,  and  each  had  its  following.  There  were  those 
who  dreamed,  as  sanguine  souls  have  been  dreaming  to 
this  day,  of  a  reformed  Catholicism,  so  that  the  ancient 
vision  of  a  single,  united  Christianity  might  be  realized 
at  last.  Others,  legitimate  descendants  of  the  early 
perfectionist  sects,  fancied  the  time  had  come  for  a  king- 
dom of  God  on  earth  in  the  hands  of  a  few  chosen  in- 
struments, through  whose  gradual  increase  the  reign  of 
the  carnal  man  should  cease  and  the  reign  of  the  spirit- 
ual man  be  established  forever.  The  former  of  these 
ideals,  the  reformation  of  Catholicism  from  within, 
without  disturbing  its  fundamental  principle  of  univer- 


2IO  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

sality,  had  been  thoroughly  tried  out.  One  after  an- 
other, preachers  and  prophets,  from  Arnold  of  Brescia 
to  Savonarola,  had  thundered  against  evils  which  were 
largely  due  to  the  very  idea  of  universahty  they  pro- 
fessed themselves  still  eager  to  uphold.  Again  and 
again  men  had  banded  themselves  together  into  vast 
associations,  each  a  new  protest  against  the  worldliness 
and  neglect  of  a  church  whose  most  devoted  supporters 
they  still  declared  themselves  to  be.  One  after  an- 
other, men  of  enlightenment  had  shown  the  way  to 
liberty,  only  to  protest  at  the  end  that  nothing  they 
might  say  should  be  taken  as  in  any  way  reflecting 
upon  that  authority  of  the  Church  which  their  whole 
lives  had  been  given  to  weakening.  It  had  been 
thoroughly  tried  and  men  had  had  enough  of  it. 

Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  were  the  men  of  the  sixteenth 
century  to  be  stampeded  into  any  wild  schemes  of  per- 
fectionism. If  Romanism  was  bad,  the  reign  of  the 
^'Free  Spirit"  promised  to  be  infinitely  worse.  It  was 
fortunate  for  the  sanity  of  the  early  Reformation  that  its 
more  radical  elements,  with  their  noble  enthusiasms, 
their  irresistible  logic,  and  their  undaunted  courage, 
should  have  had  full  chance  to  show  their  most  ex- 
travagant tendencies.  It  was  a  warning  and  an  example 
at  once.  It  was  a  warning  not  to  push  all  ideas  to  their 
logical  extreme;    but  it  was  an  example  also  of  deter- 


THE   CHURCH  211 

mined  insistence  upon  essential  things,  even  to  the  sac- 
rifice of  the  principle  of  unity. 

So  it  came  about  once  more  in  the  history  of  the 
Church  that  the  friction  of  the  three  fundamental  ideas 
ended  in  the  prevalence  of  one  of  them.  Only  now  it 
was  not  the  idea  of  imity  but  the  idea  of  individuality 
that  prevailed  over  the  other  two.  One  of  the  most 
dramatic  moments  in  early  Reformation  history  is 
when,  in  the  year  1529,  Luther  was  called  upon  to  nego- 
tiate with  the  Swiss  reformers  with  a  view  to  forming  a 
Protestant  Union.  The  temptation  from  every  worldly 
point  of  view  was  almost  overwhelming.  Nearly  the 
whole  of  Northern  Germany,  with  the  Scandinavian 
countries  at  its  back,  a  great  part  of  Southern  Germany 
and  Eastern  Switzerland,  had  already  declared  for  the 
Great  Revolt.  If  they  had  chosen  to  stand  together, 
reaching  out  a  hand  toward  France,  Italy,  Austria,  the 
Low  Countries,  wherever  men  were  inclining  toward 
their  ideas,  it  seemed,  humanly  speaking,  as  if  they 
might  make  themselves  irresistible  and  dictate  terms  to 
Papacy  and  Empire  alike.  A  great  international  Prot- 
estant League  might  have  provided  the  principle  of 
formal  unity  that  seemed  necessary  to  set  over  against 
the  still  imposing  unity  of  CathoKcism.  In  this  crisis 
Luther  saw  the  danger  and  faced  it  with  his  customary 
boldness  and  more  than  his  usual  disregard  of  logical 


212  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

consistency.  ''These  men"  he  said  of  the  Swiss,  who 
were  ready  to  make  great  concessions  for  unity,  ''are  of 
another  spirit."  He  was  willing  to  let  them  go  their 
way  provided  he  and  his  were  free  to  go  theirs.  He 
would  not  persecute;  but  he  would  not  be  bound. 
The  word  was  spoken,  and  now  for  four  hundred 
years  Protestantism  has  lived  up  to  it.  The  Protestant 
churches  have  been  the  clearest  expression  of  what  we 
have  called  the  sectarian  or  individualistic  theory  of  the 
Christian  Church.  They  have  often  been  accused  of 
having  sacrificed  the  principle  of  Christian  unity;  but 
they  have  shown  their  essential  kinship  by  maintaining 
the  great  doctrine  of  the  right  to  differ,  —  not  always 
consistently  or  with  good  grace.  We  are  not  to  forget 
the  lamentable  history  of  Protestant  persecution.  But 
the  fact  remains  that  the  world  owes  its  present  free- 
dom from  religious  oppression  to  the  balancing  of  in- 
dependent sects  which  is  the  direct  result  of  the 
Protestant  principle.  Let  any  one  infallible  church  of 
authority  get  control  of  any  community  and  the  temper 
of  persecution,  always  lurking  in  the  dark  corners  of 
human  society,  will  certainly  have  its  turn  again. 

This  historical  introduction  has  seemed  necessary 
that  we  may  indicate  more  clearly  the  relation  of  Uni- 
tarian thought  on  this  subject  to  that  which  preceded  it. 
Unitarians  acknowledge  their   debt  to  all  three  of   the 


THE   CHURCH 


213 


tendencies  we  have  been  describing.  They  are  Catholic 
in  that  they  believe  in  the  conception  of  the  Church 
as  a  great,  all-inclusive  community  of  men  working, 
each  in  his  own  way,  for  the  realization  of  that  kingdom 
of  God  which  was  the  beginning  and  the  end  of  the 
mission  of  Jesus.  They  think  of  the  Church  as  an 
educative  agency  and  would  therefore  admit  to  it  all 
who  in  sincerity  desire  to  share  its  usefulness  in  bring- 
ing men  to  a  fuller  sense  of  their  obhgation  to  the  higher 
life.  They  sympathize  also  with  the  movements  we 
have  classified  as  *' esoteric"  in  their  notion  of  a  direct 
dealing  of  God  with  the  souls  of  men  without  the  inter- 
vention of  priesthood  or  sacramental  observances.  The 
idea  of  the  Holy  Spirit  working  w^here  it  will,  uttering 
itself  through  fitting  agencies  and  independent  of  hu- 
man devices,  attracts  them  at  many  points.  But  most 
of  all  Unitarians  are  heart  and  soul  Protestant  in  their 
acceptance  of  the  principle  of  individuahsm  as  the 
natural  basis  of  Church  organization.  They  are  not 
alarmed  at  all  by  the  obvious  criticism  that  individual- 
ism is  the  mere  negative  of  all  organization,  and  that 
the  result  of  their  attitude  would  be  to  make  every 
man  a  church  by  himself.  They  trust  human  nature 
too  much  to  take  alarm  at  that.  Quite  as  strong  as 
the  tendency  to  self-assertion  in  man  is  the  tendency  to 
associate.     Individualism,  as  Unitarians  understand  it, 


214  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

implies  also  free  association  of  like  thinking  men.  The 
essential  thing  to  their  mind  is  that  the  thinking  should 
come  first  and  the  associating  afterward.  The  associa- 
tion should  represent  the  honest,  individual,  independent 
thought  and  experience  of  its  members.  It  should  not 
dictate  to  them  how  they  should  think  or  feel.  The 
doctrine  of  the  association  is  the  expression  of  the  sin- 
cere conviction  of  its  members.  Its  practice  is  the  sum 
of  the  outward  observances  which  they  believe  to  be 
helpful  in  furthering  their  life  as  Christian  men.  Every 
such  association  has  the  right  to  call  itself  and  to  be 
called  a  church.  The  aggregate  of  such  churches  con- 
stitutes the  Church,  and  Unitarians  will  accept  no  other 
definition  of  it.  They  reject  with  decision  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  Church  as  a  '' realistic"  entity,  into  which 
every  individual  form  of  Christian  organization  must 
somehow  be  fitted,  —  as  if  there  were  some  absolute 
standard  of  what  a  church  ought  to  be.  They  conceive 
of  a  church  as  distinguished,  for  example,  from  a  philan- 
thropic organization,  by  having  for  its  object  the  further- 
ance of  the  Christian  religious  life.  It  may  combine 
with  this  many  other  things,  —  works  of  charity,  edu- 
cational enterprises,  social  objects,  —  any  good  thing 
whatever;  but  these  do  not  make  its  character  as  a 
church.  That  comes  wholly  from  its  religious  side,  and 
failing  this  it  would  be  only  a  social  club.     Its  problem  is 


THE   CHURCH  215 

to  see  to  it  that  these  other  activities  do  not  come  to 
stand  by  themselves  as  something  apart  from  its  relig- 
ious life.  They  must  flow  from  this  and  must  find  their 
support  in  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the  religious  side  of 
the  Church  may  find  in  these  practical  appUcations  the 
most  tangible  proofs  of  its  own  value  to  the  world. 

The  Unitarian  is  not  bhnd  to  the  dangers  of  this  view 
of  the  Church.  He  is  aware  of  the  extravagances  into 
which  the  sectarian  spirit  may  lead.  He  knows  the 
long  and  unedifying  history  of  how  seemingly  unim- 
portant differences  have  been  magnified  into  dissensions 
that  have  turned  men's  minds  away  from  the  essential 
unities  of  the  religious  life.  He  sees  all  this  and  would 
gladly  do  what  he  can  to  limit  it.  It  would  be  a  bless- 
ing indeed  if  now  minor  differences  could  be  ignored 
and  men  could  unite  upon  the  larger  unities.  But,  in 
the  first  place,  what  are  minor  differences  ?  —  who  is  to 
determine  them?  To  set  up  any  tribunal  outside  the 
churches  themselves  would  be  to  destroy  that  principle 
of  independence  as  against  all  authority  which  is  the 
corner-stone  of  the  Unitarian's  thought  on  this  whole 
subject.  We  used  the  phrase  "seemingly  unimportant" 
advisedly,  for  men  have  strangely  been  moved  to  re- 
ligious and  moral,  even  to  intellectual  activity,  on 
questions  which,  in  what  seems  the  larger  light  of  our 
own  thought,  would  appear  quite  unworthy  of  serious 


2i6  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

attention.  No  doubt  pettinesses  of  many  kinds  have 
been  engendered  by  these  controversies;  but  the  Uni- 
tarian feels  that  in  any  case  activity  is  better  than  sloth, 
and  the  very  narrowness  of  the  discussions  has  made 
them  fruitful  as  a  training  in  rational  thought.  As 
between  the  dangers  of  overzealous  sectarian  contro- 
versy and  those  of  any  single  dominant  authority, 
Unitarians  would  unhesitatingly  choose  the  former. 
They  see,  as  a  matter  of  history,  that  wherever  thought 
has  been  free  to  move  as  it  would,  there  men  have 
generally  worked  themselves  out  from  the  limitations 
of  a  narrow  environment.  True  progress  in  human 
thought  has  always  come  in  this  way  and  in  no  other. 
If  men  are  free  to  change  the  forms  of  their  expression 
of  faith,  that  faith  is  sure  to  be  kept  always  abreast  of 
the  world's  best  thought.  If  a  man  cannot  find  room 
to  expand  in  one  connection,  he  seeks  another  and 
knows  that  he  is  not  thus  proving  himself  recreant  to 
the  faith,  but  is  rather  giving  it  a  deeper,  because  a 
more  sincere,  loyalty.  On  the  other  hand,  if  to  secure 
a  formal  unity  a  man  is  compelled  to  sacrifice  any 
essential  conviction,  he  finds  himself  sinking  ever  deeper 
and  deeper  into  a  tangle  of  compromises,  in  which,  if 
he  think  at  all,  he  will  finally  become  ingulfed.  From 
such  confusion  there  is  no  escape  except  in  general  in- 
difference or  intellectual  sloth. 


THE  CHURCH 


217 


Still  further;  if  the  Unitarian  approves  division  into 
groups  according  to  the  real  differences  in  state  of  mind 
which  actually  do  exist  among  men,  so,  when  it  comes 
to  the  question  of  order  within  the  group,  he  is  equally 
steadfast  in  his  defence  of  individuality.  Among  the 
various  poHties  which  have  been  tried  within  the  Church, 
he  declares  unhesitatingly  in  support  of  the  principle  of 
Congregationalism.  He  goes  back  to  the  original  decla- 
ration: *' Where  two  or  three  are  gathered  together  in 
my  name,  there  am  I  in  the  midst  of  them."  That  is  the 
Unitarian  ideal  of  a  Church  — ■  two  or  three  or  a  thou- 
sand, gathered  in  sincere  desire  to  live  the  Christian  life  as 
they  can  understand  it,  —  not  asking  any  one  else  what 
that  Hfe  may  be,  but  having  their  own  working  agree- 
ment as  to  how  they  may  best  bring  it  to  its  full  expres- 
sion. In  that  body  rests  the  law  of  its  own  organization. 
It  may  choose  its  own  ministers  and  may  ordain  them 
by  as  valid  a  title  as  any  that  ever  existed.  It  must 
provide  for  their  honorable  maintenance,  so  long  as 
they  devote  themselves  heartily  to  its  welfare.  It  may 
fix  the  conditions  of  its  own  membership  and  may  apply 
to  its  members  such  discipline  as  may  seem  good  to 
itself.  It  may  determine  the  forms  of  its  own  worship, 
using  such  as  may  seem  to  it  best  adapted  to  kindle 
reverence  and  to  stimulate  an  enhghtened  morahty. 
There  is  no  hmit  to  the  freedom  with  which  this  sover- 


2l8  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

eign  congregation  may  provide  for  what  seem  to  it  the 
best  reHgious  interests  of  its  members. 

But  now  once  more  it  will  be  charged  that  Unitarian- 
ism  must  issue  in  a  defiant  but  sterile  individuahsm, 
each  congregation,  if  not  hostile,  at  least  indifferent,  to 
its  neighbor.  Such  has  not  been  the  history  of  Con- 
gregationalism. Here  again  the  Unitarian  has  faith  in 
the  instinct  of  human  nature  which  leads  men  to  asso- 
ciate when  they  may  do  so  freely  and  without  surrender 
of  their  own  souls.  The  sovereign  congregation  will 
unite  with  others  of  its  kind,  and  the  union  will  be  all 
the  stronger  because  it  comes  from  below  and  within, 
not  from  above  and  without.  But,  it  will  be  said,  in 
such  a  union  as  this  there  must  be  continual  discussion 
as  to  the  best  ways  of  accompHshing  ends,  even  though 
all  are  fairly  united  as  to  what  these  ends  ought  to  be. 
That  is  true,  and  in  such  discussion  the  Unitarian  finds, 
not  a  defect,  but  a  virtue  of  the  Congregational  principle. 
In  the  Church,  as  in  civil  society,  nothing  is  perfect. 
Vitality  can  be  maintained  only  by  a  continual  striving 
toward  better  and  more  effective  methods.  Discussion, 
experiment,  sometimes  failure,  are  the  agencies  whereby 
the  world  of  human  things  moves.  If  we  try  to  exclude 
them  by  subjecting  the  individual  man,  congregation, 
group,  to  the  authority  of  any  one  man  or  any  select 
body  of  men,  we  quench  the  spirit  at  its  source. 


THE   CHURCH  219 

Such  is  the  Unitarian's  Constitution,  the  only  canon- 
law  to  which  he  will  subject  himself,  the  law  of  a  free 
association,  making  its  own  statutes,  but  conforming 
these  always  to  the  great  common  law  of  Hberty.  It 
will  be  evident  from  all  that  has  been  said,  that  the 
thing  most  repugnant  to  the  Unitarian  is  ecclesiasticism 
in  all  its  forms.  This  is  not  to  say  that  he  is  not  sen- 
sitive to  the  charm  which  Kes  in  a  great  tradition  or  that 
he  cannot  appreciate  the  force  that  comes  from  con- 
centration of  power.  What  repels  him  from  ecclesias- 
ticism is  the  feeHng  that  in  the  things  of  the  spirit  there 
is  no  room  for  such  considerations.  He  goes  back  in 
this,  as  in  every  other  matter,  to  the  beginning  and 
seeks  there  in  vain  for  any  suggestion  of  a  Church  in 
the  sense  of  a  later  time.  There  is  for  him  no  more 
instructive  moment  in  the  history  of  the  Church  than 
that  crisis  in  its  affairs  when  the  immediate  followers 
of  the  Master  were  brought  face  to  face  with  the  most 
important  question  that  has  ever  called  for  answer  in 
Christian  terms.  The  Hebrew  pupils  of  the  Hebrew 
prophet  were  already  divided  as  to  whether  or  no  the 
message  they  had  received  might  be  shared  in  full 
measure  with  men  of  alien  blood  to  whom  the  Hebrew 
traditions  of  law  and  of  faith  meant  nothing  or  less 
than  nothing.  The  discussion  was  long  and  bitter.  It 
had  obviously  reached  out  to  include  not  only  jealousies 


220  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

of  race,  but  jealousies  of  place  and  rank  as  well.  It 
was  threatening  the  very  life  of  the  infant  community, 
when  Paul,  Hebrew  indeed,  but  man  first,  guided  it  into 
the  way  of  friendly  conference,  not  appealing  to  any 
authority  except  the  spirit  of  the  Teaching  they  all 
professed  to  follow,  but  frankly  taking  the  way  of  com- 
promise. It  was  the  first  great  recognition  of  the  right 
to  differ  as  the  true  foundation  of  that  Christian  unity 
which  is  not  uniformity,  but  rather  the  expression  of 
the  innermost  spirit  of  truth-seeking  and  truth-telling. 

The  claim  of  any  group  of  men  to  control  the  fortunes 
of  all  the  followers  of  Christ  seems  to  the  Unitarian  a 
monstrous  perversion  of  the  teaching  of  the  Master. 
He  cannot  recognize  the  right  of  any  one  authority  to 
define  the  limits  of  Christian  membership,  to  fix  the 
forms  of  Christian  worship,  to  declare  articles  of  beHef 
and  enforce  their  acceptance,  least  of  all,  to  say  how 
far  men  may  go  in  using  their  minds  in  the  study  of 
truth.  All  that  is  what  the  word  "  ecclesiasticism " 
represents  to  him.  It  expresses  the  idea  of  the  institu- 
tion absorbing  the  man  instead  of  the  man  making  the 
institution.  Even  historically  he  finds  that  the  institu- 
tion came  through  the  activity  of  individuals.  That 
there  was  a  "Church"  before  there  were  any  Christians, 
a  divine  abstraction  to  be  realized  only  when  men  came 
to  be  organized  in  a  certain  prescribed  fashion,  —  this 


THE   CHURCH  221 

'^ realistic"  conception  of  a  Church  he  repudiates  as  a 
puerile  device,  adopted  after  the  fact  and  in  order  to 
maintain  a  mechanism  that  had  come  to  seem  a  divine 
necessity.  It  would  be  easy  in  this  connection  to  en- 
large upon  the  baser  motives  of  ecclesiasticism  —  the 
pride  of  priestly  rank,  the  enjoyment  of  special  privilege, 
the  lust  of  power,  the  arrogance  of  religious  conceit 
that  are  the  stock  in  trade  of  '^ evangelical"  criticism  of 
ecclesiasticism,  but,  as  the  Unitarian  desires  to  be 
judged  by  his  best,  so  he  is  willing  to  judge  others  by 
their  best.  He  will  give  all  credit  to  the  honest  con- 
viction of  the  ''Church"  that  it  is  a  specially  divine 
institution,  complete  from  the  beginning,  and  free  only 
in  the  sense  that  it  may  employ  continually  new  devices 
to  keep  men's  souls  from  wandering  away  from  this  one 
appointed  path  to  safety.  He  tries  to  respect  its  honest 
belief  that  it  is  the  special  depositary  of  certain  truths 
which  it  alone  may  interpret  to  the  understanding  of 
successive  generations  of  men.  He  cannot  repress  even 
a  certain  admiration  for  the  ingenuity  it  has  displayed 
in  finding  supports  for  these  honest  convictions  in  its 
own  precedents  and  in  the  processes  of  its  own  historical 
development.  The  Unitarian  is  impressed,  as  every  one 
must  be,  by  the  extraordinary  continuity  of  force  in 
these  traditions ;  but,  as  himself  an  honest  man,  he  can 
only  say  that  he  believes  these  honest  people  to  be 


2  22  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

mistaken,  and  he  will  not  run  the  risks  of  subjecting 
himself  to  the  dangers  involved  in  trying  to  fit  himself 
to  their  methods. 

Above  all,  the  Unitarian  is  repelled  by  the  notion  of 
an  authority  in  rehgion  conveyed  from  one  generation 
to  another  by  a  mysterious  process  of  initiation  which 
rests  not  upon  the  character  and  capacity  of  the  in- 
dividual, but,  in  the  last  resort,  upon  the  perfection  of 
the  process  itself.  The  ''apostolic  succession,"  the 
most  imposing  of  institutions  to  the  ecclesiastical  mind, 
is  to  him  as  repellent  in  theory  as  he  beheves  it  to  be 
evil  in  practice.  Giving  all  due  credit  to  the  desire  of 
the  Church  to  provide  itself  with  a  learned  and  virtuous 
ministry,  he  cannot  forget  that  those  functions  of  the 
minister  which  are  declared  to  be  the  most  important, 
the  due  administration  of  certain  prescribed  ''sacra- 
mental" rites,  do  not  derive  their  sanction  at  all  from 
his  personal  qualifications,  but  solely  from  the  regularity 
of  his  ordination.  It  seems  to  the  Unitarian  inevitable 
that,  under  these  circumstances,  the  emphasis  of  im- 
portance in  religious  things  should  be  misplaced.  Men 
must  come  to  believe  that  the  all-important  thing  for 
them  is  regularity  and  that  their  own  individual  char- 
acter is  comparatively  of  little  account.  He  thinks  he 
sees  in  history  every  evidence  that  this  has  been  the 
case.     With  all  its  pretence  of  a  divine  commission,  the 


THE   CHURCH 


223 


apostolically  qualified  priesthood  never  succeeded  in 
keeping  itself  clean  for  any  great  length  of  time.  Its 
history  is  one  long  record  of  decHne  and  recovery,  and 
its  recovery  has  invariably  been  due  to  a  pressure  from 
some  source  not  claiming  any  specially  divine  sanction, 
from  the  outraged  common-sense  of  the  community, 
from  ''prophets"  who  could  not  be  silenced,  or  from  the 
organized  governments  of  Christian  states  whose  rights 
had  been  invaded.  If  such  has  been  the  history  of 
doiTiinant  ecclesiasticism,  the  Unitarian  sees  no  reason 
why  similar  results  should  not  follow  in  the  future  and 
he  is  not  willing  to  take  the  risks. 

If  it  were  solely  a  question  of  the  one  great  organiza- 
tion which  stands  or  falls  by  its  apostolic  succession, 
the  case  would  be  simpler.  Unitarians  could  then 
simply  go  their  way  and  let  the  "Church"  go  hers. 
The  issue  would  be  clear  and  each  side  would  know  its 
friends.  Unfortunately  the  issue  is  no  longer  so  clear. 
The  appeal  of  imiformity  as  against  diversity,  of  au- 
thority as  against  the  spirit,  —  or,  rather,  of  authority 
as  alone  in  possession  of  the  spirit,  —  and  of  tradition  as 
against  independent  judgment,  —  this  appeal  has  gained 
greatly  in  force.  While  men  have  seemed  to  be  ap- 
proaching the  Unitarian  position  by  many  ways,  ap- 
proaching it  so  nearly  as  almost  to  have  reached  it,  there 
has  been  an  equally  marked  tendency  to  appropriate 


2  24  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  results  of  Unitarian  independence  and  courage  in 
the  service  of  uniformity.  The  language  and  forms  and 
much  of  the  sentiment  of  long-abandoned  ecclesiasticism 
have  been  revived  and  men  have  hailed  the  coming  of  a 
near  day  when  once  again  CathoHcism  —  only  now  a 
genuine  CathoHcism  of  all  ''good  men,"  without  refer- 
ence to  differences  of  "opinion"  —  should  unite  the  Chris- 
tian world  to  new  triumphs  of  the  faith.  It  has  been  a 
very  tempting  prospect.  Not  a  few  Unitarians  have 
been  carried  away  by  it.  The  old  war-cries  of  the 
earliest  centuries  have  been  heard  again.  "The  Church," 
"uniformity,"  "authority,"  "ordination,"  "sacraments," 
"discipline"  have  been  combined  with  many  others  bor- 
rowed from  other  dominant  interests  of  our  day,  — 
"cooperation,"  "combination,"  "together,"  —  to  form  a 
complex  of  ideas  that  may  well  have  confused  many  a 
steady  head.  Ecclesiasticism  has  been  at  hand  to 
profit  by  all  this.  "Here,"  it  has  said,  "is  the  remedy. 
Let  us  sink  all  differences  and  go  on  together  against  the 
common  foes  of  our  present-day  society."  That  is  a 
very  seductive  invitation,  but  the  reply  of  Unitarian- 
ism  is  clear  and  unmistakable. 

It  asks  first :  Who  are  these  foes  ?  If  they  are  moral 
enemies,  then  Unitarians  see  no  reason  why  men  can- 
not unite  in  warfare  against  them  without  sacrificing 
one  particle  of  their  present  forms  of  religious  associa- 


THE  CHURCH  225 

tion.  They  are  prepared  to  lend  a  hand  in  every  good 
cause,  and  they  feel  that  readiness  to  join  in  such  com- 
mon endeavor  is  precisely  one  of  the  very  best  tests  of 
the  value  of  any  religious  organization.  Any  *' church" 
which  holds  itself  aloof  from  the  common  service  of  the 
community,  lest  it  compromise  itself  in  the  eyes  of 
some  authority  on  which  it  depends,  condemns  itself  as 
unworthy  of  the  name  it  claims  a  superior  right  to  bear. 
In  any  such  friendly  rivalry  of  Christian  service  Uni- 
tarians do  not  fear  comparison  with  any  other  branch 
of  the  imiversal  Church.  But  are  these  the  foes  against 
whom  Unitarians  are  invited  to  join  by  those  who, 
claiming  to  be  the  sole  lawful  representatives  of  the 
Church,  will  accept  them  if  only  they  will  so  far  modify 
their  interpretation  of  certain  fundamental  teachings  of 
Christianity  as  to  adopt  the  formulas  of  faith  and  con- 
form to  the  outward  practices  of  the  body  that  invites 
them?  Unitarians  do  not  think  so.  They  think  they 
are  being  invited  to  war  against  far  different  foes. 
They  suspect  that  under  the  guise  of  a  desire  for  peace 
they  are  being  tempted  to  turn  against  some  of  their 
own  most  cherished  allies.  They  do  not  regard  it  as  a 
small  thing  to  give  up  their  precious  right  to  differ, 
even  to  the  bitter  end,  on  such  deep-going  questions 
as,  for  instance,  salvation  for  humanity  through  a  specific 
incarnation  of  deity  in  a  given  man  at  a  given  time,  or 

Q 


226  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  meaning  of  the  future  of  humanity  as  certified  by 
the  fact  of  a  specific  resurrection  from  the  dead.  They 
would  seem  to  be  declaring  war  against  their  own  intel- 
ligence and  their  own  honesty  and  shirking  the  solemn 
responsibihty  laid  upon  them  by  the  possession  of  minds 
and  consciences  to  use  these  to  their  best  ability  in  the 
highest  problems  of  the  spiritual  life.  They  dread  any 
alliance,  however  alluring,  that  may  turn  them  ever  so 
little  against  these  most  precious  of  gifts.  They  would 
rather  stand  alone  outside  of  all  religious  organization 
than  enter  upon  compromises  in  which  they  must  in- 
evitably sacrifice  what  gives  them  their  special  right  to 
be.  They  do  not  fear  that  the  world  will  ever  suffer 
for  lack  of  readiness  to  fall  in  with  attractive  promises 
of  apparent  harmony.  What  they  do  fear  is  that  men 
may  grow  careless  as  to  real  distinctions  of  thought 
and  of  spiritual  character,  and  they  desire  to  contribute 
what  they  can  toward  making  those  distinctions  clear 
and  significant.  They  are  willing  to  believe  in  the 
moral  sincerity  of  all  good  men,  no  matter  what  their 
religious  confession ;  but  they  feel  also  that  any  decline 
from  absolute  individual  integrity  of  thought  is  pretty 
certain  to  be  reflected  in  a  corresponding  weakness  of 
moral  fibre.  The  ancient  proposition  that  "heresy, "  i.e. 
independent  thought,  implies  a  certain  moral  dehnquency 
seems  to  them  quite  as  true  when  applied  the  other  way 


THE   CHURCH  227 

round.  At  all  events  they  may  perhaps  be  pardoned 
if  they  prefer  to  take  the  moral  risks  of  independence 
rather  than  those  of  conformity. 

To  sum  it  up :  Unitarians  believe  in  a  church,  and 
they  wish  it  might  always  be  a  holy  and  a  catholic  one. 
They  will  contribute  all  they  have  of  hoHness  and 
cathoHcity  to  bring  this  to  pass;  but  they  will  not 
assume  that  any  single  form  of  the  Church  is  holier  or 
more  catholic  than  another  on  the  strength  of  its  own 
assertions  or  in  virtue  of  any  pretended  ''apostolic" 
continuity.  They  beheve  that  a  church  can  be  holy 
only  in  so  far  as  its  members  are  leading  holy  lives  and 
they  place  their  primary  emphasis  upon  such  hoHness 
of  living.  They  beheve  in  a  catholicity  that  expresses 
itself  not  in  outward  unity  or  uniformity  but  in  the 
spirit  of  charity  towards  all  and  in  the  humility  which 
is  willing  to  learn  of  all  whatever  worthy  thing  they 
have  to  teach.  They  beheve  that  this  catholicity  is 
best  attained,  not  in  the  historically  ''Catholic"  way, 
but  in  the  Protestant  way,  and  they  are  therefore 
firmly  and  consistently  Protestant,  not  shirking  the 
responsibility  which  that  word  imposes,  but  taking  it 
up  gladly  and  doing  what  they  can  to  give  it  a  posi- 
tive reahzation.  They  believe  in  individuality  as  the 
primary  condition  of  all  successful  organization,  and 
they  are  CongregationaHsts  in   their  church   constitu- 


2  28  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

tion  because  they  believe  Congregationalism  to  be  the 
form  of  association  which  gives  at  once  freest  play  to 
the  individual  and  the  soundest  basis  for  effective  com- 
bination. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

WORSHIP 

Prayer  is  the  soul's  sincere  desire 

Uttered  or  unexpressed ; 
The  motion  of  a  hidden  fire 

That  trembles  in  the  breast. 

—  James  Montgomery. 

Unitarianism,  we  have  already  seen,  is  a  religion, 
not  a  philosophy,  nor  a  system  of  morals.  It  aims  to 
be  a  religion  that  can  be  defended  on  sound  philosophical 
principles,  and  it  hopes  to  express  itself  in  a  practical 
morality  that  will  bear  the  test  even  of  hostile  criticism. 
But  its  philosophy  is  only  an  instrument  to  keep  a 
rational  balance  between  the  emotions,  which  are  the 
true  basis  of  all  religion,  and  the  thinking  mind,  which 
is  equally  a  part  of  man's  divine  endowment.  Its 
mxorality  is  the  perfect  and  natural  flowering  out  into 
conduct  of  this  harmony  between  mind  and  feeling.  At 
the  centre,  as  source  alike  and  end,  is  the  rehgious  im- 
pulse, the  natural  outreaching  of  the  human  heart  to 
something  higher  than  itself,  —  a  something  by  which 
it  can  explain  itself  and  the  universe  of  being  that  sur- 
rounds it,  —  something  towards  which  it  can  express  its 
sentiments  of  gratitude  for  the  well-being  it  experiences; 

229 


230  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

of  desire  for  the  things  it  lacks;  and  of  reverence  for  the 
beneficence  and  power  it  recognizes.  This  religious  im- 
pulse, universal,  so  far  as  we  know,  among  men  would 
seem  to  be  the  most  purely  personal  of  emotions,  re- 
flecting each  man's  own  instincts  of  love  and  hate,  of 
fear  and  desire.  Yet,  the  farther  back  we  go,  the  more 
we  find  rehgion  an  affair,  not  of  the  individual,  but  of 
the  community,  the  family,  the  clan,  the  race,  the 
nation.  As  the  individual  finds  himself  in  all  other 
relations  a  part  of  the  social  organism,  so  in  rehgion. 
The  thing  greater  than  himself  takes  form  in  the  tribal 
deities,  the  mediators  between  the  great  imknown  and 
his  little  world  of  the  known. 

The  deahngs  with  the  unseen  powers  pass  into  the 
hands  of  "experts"  of  one  sort  or  another,  and  so  the 
priesthoods  of  the  world  have  arisen.  Their  function 
has  been  to  speak  for  the  people  with  the  gods,  to  give 
voice  to  the  desires,  the  passions,  at  times  to  the  sorrows 
and  the  repentance,  of  the  community.  In  turn  they 
have  come  to  shape  and  guide  these  feehngs.  The  com- 
munity has  been  bound  to  certain  prescribed  forms  of 
expression  for  its  emotions,  and  the  priesthoods,  as  ad- 
ministrators of  these  forms,  have  come  to  exercise  su- 
preme control  over  rehgion  and  to  extend  their  sway 
over  every  detail  of  the  associated  Hfe  of  men.  The 
dealing  of  men  with  the  gods  has  seemed  to  overlook 


WORSHIP  231 

the  individual  and  put  the  community  altogether  in  his 
place.  Only  now  and  then,  with  great  spiritual  awaken- 
ing, some  leader  has  arisen  —  Buddha,  Socrates,  Jesus, 
Mohammed,  Luther,  Wesley  —  and  has  called  men  back 
sharply  to  the  sense  of  their  own  personal  right  and 
duty,  —  their  right  to  deal  directly,  face  to  face,  with 
their  God,  their  duty  so  to  exercise  this  right  that  man- 
kind shall  be  the  braver  and  purer  for  it.  Their  call 
has  been  heard;  the  priesthoods  have  drawn  back  into 
their  corners  and  bided  their  time;  but  their  time  has 
never  again  been  quite  like  the  old  times.  Even  though 
the  early  zeal  of  reform  has  cooled  and  the  old  instincts 
have  led  to  new  forms  of  spiritual  tyranny,  still  the 
ancient  trammels  have  never  sat  quite  so  heavily  as 
before  upon  the  individual  mind  and  conscience.  Some 
part  of  the  people  has  become  fully  emancipated,  and 
the  rest,  in  spite  of  their  conformity,  have  gained  great 
advantages  from  the  freedom  they  cannot  or  will  not 
share. 

We  are  concerned  here  with  two  opposite  theories  of 
the  thing  we  call  *' worship,"  but  which  might  better  be 
called  ^'the  approach  to  God";  for  by  worship  we  do 
not  here  mean  merely  or  primarily  that  glorifying  of 
the  divine  name  which  may  so  easily  run  over  into  a 
formal  ceremony,  a  "worshipping  with  men's  hands  as 
though   He   needed   anything."    We   mean   rather   by 


232  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

worship  the  whole  attitude  of  the  soul  toward  God  and 
only  secondarily  its  expression  in  outward  forms.  These 
two  theories  may  be  defined  as  the  sacramental  and  the 
spiritual.  From  the  beginning  of  the  Church  these 
words  have  represented  a  continuous  conflict.  On  the 
one  hand  we  have  had  the  great  declaration  of  the 
Master  that  the  God  who  is  spirit  must  be  worshipped 
in  spirit.  On  the  other,  we  have  had  the  immense 
weight  of  organized  Christianity  thrown  soHdly  in  sup- 
port of  carefully  worked  out  systems  in  the  hands  of  a 
class  claiming  for  itself  a  divine  commission  to  guide  the 
souls  of  men  in  their  approach  to  God.  Wherever  the 
sacramental  theory  of  worship  has  prevailed,  the  spirit- 
ual theory  has  come  to  be  regarded  with  peculiar  detes- 
tation. To  come  to  God  without  the  agency  of  the 
organized  mechanism  of  the  Church  has  been  treated  as 
the  worst  of  crimes.  If  we  examine  the  most  flagrant 
cases  of  Christian  persecution,  we  shall  find  that  what- 
ever was  the  nominal  pretext,  the  real  offence  was  this : 
that  the  individual  had  been  guilty  of  presenting  him- 
self without  proper  introduction,  as  it  were,  before  the 
being  whom  he  believed  to  be  his  maker  and  his  friend. 
On  the  other  hand,  whenever  the  spiritual  view  of  wor- 
ship has  found  vigorous  expression,  it  has  always  been 
against  the  sacramental  system  that  it  has  protested 
most   loudly   and   most   persistently.     We   are   dealing 


WORSHIP 


233 


here,  therefore,  with  one  of  the  most  profound  antago- 
nisms of  the  reHgious  consciousness,  and  it  is  worth 
while  to  examine  it  a  little  more  closely. 

The  essence  of  the  sacramental  theory  of  worship  lies 
in  the  idea  that  there  is  an  essential  opposition  between 
man  and  God,  a  gulf  that  is  to  be  bridged,  a  sin  that  is 
to  be  atoned,  an  anger  that  is  to  be  appeased,  a  dis- 
cord that  is  to  be  harmonized.  However  far  we  may 
seem  to  be  removed  from  primitive  notions  of  sacrifice, 
this  is  the  idea  which  under  one  or  another  form  runs 
through  all  ^^sacramental"  processes.  A  something  is 
to  be  done  which  requires  on  our  part  a  specific  effort 
directed  to  a  specific  end.  We  no  longer  sacrifice  our 
children  or  our  first-fruits,  but  we  are  asked  to  believe 
that,  through  accepting  a  supreme  sacrifice  on  the  part 
of  a  being  who  was  one  of  ourselves  at  the  same  time 
that  he  was  actually  God,  we  are  taking  part  in  a  sac- 
rifice as  real  as  any  ever  performed.  It  is  true  that 
this  sacramental  idea  of  worship  was  profoundly  modified 
at  the  great  Reformation.  ''Anti-sacramentalism"  was 
one  of  the  catchwords  of  the  reforming  parties.  "No 
mediator  but  Christ"  was  the  battle  cry  that  rallied 
the  armies  of  the  North  against  papal  domination. 
Still,  the  idea  of  opposition  between  God  and  man  has 
remained,  and,  in  the  general  shading  off  of  differences 
which  is  the  tendency  of  our  time,  it  has  taken  on  new 


234  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

and  more  subtly  attractive  forms.  Its  grosser  aspects 
have  been  toned  down  to  meet  the  advance  of  freer 
thought.  Ritualism  has  been  presented  as  after  all 
only  a  means  of  satisfying  a  natural  human  desire  for 
form  and  of  avoiding  the  crudities  and  extravagances  of 
individual  effort.  We  are  reminded  that  Hturgical 
repetition  appeals  to  a  certain  instinct  of  the  human 
heart.  Forms,  we  are  told,  are  valuable  as  aids  to  the 
spirit.  Through  forms  of  ritual  our  minds  are  removed 
from  the  ordinary  processes  of  logical  reckoning  and 
guided  gently  into  the  channels  of  spiritual  reflection. 
The  attitude  of  the  soul  in  worship  should  be  as  far  as 
possible  removed  from  that  of  our  non-worshipping 
hours.  We  should  cultivate  the  sense  of  form  even  in 
the  outward  circumstances  of  worship.  The  very  place, 
the  enclosure  of  the  four  walls,  should  be  in  a  special 
sense  ''consecrated"  by  some  specific  act  on  the  part  of 
some  recognized  authority.  The  words  there  spoken 
should  be  authorized  in  such  a  way  that  those  who  hear 
them  may  be  safe  from  the  scandal  of  individual  whim 
or  fancy.  Even  the  tone  in  which  they  are  uttered 
should  be  ''elevated"  above  that  of  every  day.  It 
should  be  as  far  as  possible  dehumanized  and  made  like 
the  tone  of  a  mechanical  instrument  lest  the  thought  of 
the  individual  intrude  itself  upon  the  worshipping  mul- 
titude.   Especially  should  the  words  of  sacred  Scripture 


WORSHIP  235 

be  read  in  a  voice  deprived  of  all  semblance  of  humanity, 
so  that  no  particle  of  personal  suggestion  or  interpreta- 
tion may  mar  its  divine  perfection.  In  a  word  we  are 
asked  to  believe  that  the  most  perfect  and  most  accept- 
able worship  is  that  in  which  the  individual  disappears 
most  completely  because  he  has  sunk  himself  in  the 
common  impulse  of  surrender  to  the  external  influences 
of  a  once  powerful  tradition.  This  kind  of  persuasion 
is  the  more  subtle  because  it  contains  a  measure  of 
truth.  It  is  true  that  we  are  all  sensitive  in  greater  or 
less  degree  to  the  influences  of  form,  and  that  the  repeti- 
tion of  words  as  meaningless  as  "Mesopotamia"  has  its 
effect  upon  our  imagination.  It  must  be  a  dull  mind 
indeed  that  does  not  respond  to  the  incommunicable 
suggestions  of  the  Gothic  Cathedral,  or  thrill  to  the 
sound  of  stately  music  written  to  enforce  the  solemnity 
of  majestic  words.  And  it  must  be  a  hardened  soul 
indeed  that  is  not  softened  by  the  repetition  of  words 
that  have  been  sanctified  to  it  by  the  impressions  of 
youth  and  by  the  tender  associations  of  mature  life. 

All  this  would  be  admitted  by  every  serious  and 
reasonable  individualist.  The  point  of  his  conflict  with 
the  ritualist  is  not  precisely  here.  It  is  rather  upon  the 
question  as  to  the  soundness  of  this  motive  as  a  stimulus 
to  the  rehgious  Hfe,  and  it  is  just  at  this  point  that  the 
Unitarian  attitude  becomes  clear  and  defensible.     It  is 


236  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

by  this  time  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  Unitarian 
begins  in  this  matter  as  in  others  with  the  individual. 
He  knows  perfectly  well  the  power  over  the  individual 
of  the  sense  of  community  and  he  would  utilize  this  as  a 
valuable  aid  in  strengthening  the  individual's  sense  of 
his  own  relation  to  God  and  to  Kfe.  We  have  seen  how 
this  balance  of  the  individual  and  the  community  affects 
his  understanding  of  the  nature  and  function  of  the 
Church.  The  Church  as  an  organization  owes  its  whole 
value,  in  his  mind,  to  the  nature  of  the  individuals  who 
compose  it.  So  it  is  with  the  question  of  formahsm  in 
worship.  The  Unitarian  would  have  no  quarrel  with 
forms  if  he  could  be  quite  sure  that  they  really  repre- 
sented the  honest  personal  thought  and  feeling  of  those 
who  practise  them.  It  is  because  he  is  not  sure  of  this 
—  or,  rather,  because  he  is  quite  sure  of  the  contrary  — 
that  he  dreads  all  formalism  in  worship,  and  is  ready 
to  take  his  chances  on  the  other  side.  What  he  thinks 
he  sees  in  the  formalisms  of  worship  is  that  they  in- 
variably tend  first  to  obscure  and  then  to  falsify  the 
thought  of  those  who  practice  them.  He  does  not 
beHeve  it  is  possible  that  any  form  of  words  can  for 
any  long  period  of  time  continue  to  express  the  advan- 
cing thought  of  honest  and  independent  men,  and  he 
beHeves  that  the  arrangements  of  the  rehgious  life,  as 
of  all  other  forms  of  associated  Hfe,   should  be  made 


WORSHIP  237 

for  the  honest  and  the  independent,  —  not  for  the  shifty 
and  the  timid. 

It  follows,  therefore,  that  the  Unitarian  is  the  de- 
clared enemy  of  all  consistent  sacramentaKsm.  He  is 
ready  to  define  worship  as  the  approach  to  God,  but  he 
will  not  accept  as  guides  along  that  road  any  formu- 
lated series  of  ordinances,  no  matter  how  cleverly  they 
may  seem  bound  together  by  unbroken  traditions  of  the 
Church.  He  will  not  admit  the  right  of  any  man  to 
tell  him  how  he  may  express  the  emotions  of  praise  or 
desire,  gratitude,  repentance,  adoration,  humility,  which 
make  up  his  attitude  toward  the  source  of  all  things. 
These,  he  feels,  are  his  own  or  they  are  nothing.  If  any 
organization  of  men  tells  him  it  has  a  special  divine  com- 
mission to  direct  his  expression  of  these  feelings,  he 
meets  its  claim  with  a  general  denial.  He  will  not 
believe  that  any  human  organization  knows  any  better 
than  another  or  any  better  than  he  himself  the  mind  of 
God,  which  is  the  end  of  worship,  and  so  he  is  not  afraid 
to  make  his  way  alone.  Worship  seems  to  him  so  great 
a  thing  that  he  cannot  admit  any  intrusion  into  it  on 
the  part  of  any  one.  He  dares,  because  he  must,  bring 
his  own  sorrow,  his  own  thankfulness,  his  own  aspira- 
tion, weakness,  repentance  and  set  them  in  the  light 
of  that  Infinite  Presence  in  which  alone  they  find  their 
true  meaning  for  him.     He  dares  this  because  he  thinks 


238  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

of  God  as  his  natural  resort  in  all  his  highest  states  of 
feeling.  That  is  what  God  means  to  him.  It  means 
the  source  and  centre  of  all  that  Life  in  which  his  Hfe 
is  a  part,  the  strength  of  his  weakness,  the  Hght  of  his 
darkness,  the  goal  of  his  ambitions,  the  giver  of  all  that 
seems  to  him  good,  the  giver  also  —  in  love  —  of  what 
seems  to  him  evil. 

These  are  the  forms  under  which  God  presents  him- 
self to  his  mind,  and  how  then  can  he  do  otherwise  than 
set  himself  freely,  without  reserve  and  without  media- 
tion, into  relation  with  a  being  so  intimately  bound  up 
with  every  deeper  feeling,  every  higher  impulse  of  his 
nature  ?  We  have  said  the  ritualist  thinks  of  the  in- 
dividual as  intruding  himself  into  a  higher  order,  to 
which  he  ought  to  be  subject.  The  Unitarian  -has  pre- 
cisely the  opposite  feeling.  To  him  the  ritual  is  the 
intruding  thing.  The  natural  and  normal  attitude  of 
man  is  to  be  near  to  God.  It  is  only  when  some  false 
authority  tries  to  impose  itself  upon  him,  that  he  is 
forced  away  from  that  natural  and  simple  relation. 
That  is  what  seems  to  the  Unitarian  an  intrusion:  when 
priesthoods  and  orders,  rituals  and  Kturgies,  come  in 
between  man  and  his  God.  The  impertinence,  the 
crime,  seems  to  him  to  be  on  the  other  side.  The 
proper,  the  fitting,  thing  is  that  the  man  be  free;  the 
false,  the  confusing,  thing  is  that  he  be  bound  by  any 


WORSHIP  239 

fixed  system  in  the  making  of  which  he  has  had  no 
share. 

In  this  last  word  we  find  the  clue  to  the  Unitarian's 
thought  on  the  whole  question  of  common  worship.  It 
will  be  objected  here,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Unitarian 
idea  of  the  Church,  that  the  logical  outcome  would  be 
to  drive  every  man  apart  by  himself  into  the  soKtude 
of  his  own  soul  when  he  desired  most  to  draw  near  to 
God.  The  Unitarian  accepts  the  criticism  and  points 
here  again  to  the  teaching  of  the  Master.  If  there  was 
anything  about  which  the  teaching  of  Jesus  was  clearer 
than  another,  it  was  this.  If  there  was  any  evil  he 
thought  it  worth  while  to  combat  more  steadily  than 
any  other,  it  was  the  abuse  of  a  soul-destroying  ritualism 
that  had  intruded  itself  between  the  people  and  their 
God  until  it  seemed  as  if  all  the  springs  of  a  natural 
piety  had  been  parched  and  dried  up  within  them  for- 
ever. The  command  of  Jesus  was  to  throw  it  all  off  — 
not  to  compromise  or  explain  away,  but  to  throw  the 
whole  thing  off  at  once  and  go  back  straight  to  the 
simple  worship  in  spirit  of  a  God  who  was  spirit.  The 
supreme  harmony  of  man  with  God  was,  so  he  taught, 
to  be  attained  only  when  the  individual  soul  should 
withdraw  itself  from  all  outward  influence  —  should 
enter  into  its  closet  and  pray  in  secret  to  its  Father, 
who  sees  in  secret. 


240  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

Shall  we  then  try  to  be  absolutely  logical  and  literal 
in  our  understanding  of  this  teaching?  Shall  we  say, 
as  some  men  have  tried  from  the  beginning  to  say: 
Let  us  have  no  forms,  no  organization,  no  recognition  of 
the  common  instincts  of  humanity,  no  appreciation  of 
the  subtle  influence  of  the  community  upon  the  indi- 
vidual? To  all  this  the  Unitarian  answers,  *'No." 
Here  as  elsewhere  it  is  a  question,  not  indeed  of  com- 
promises, but  of  proportion,  of  emphasis,  of  adjustment 
between  opposing  forces.  He  believes  the  teaching  of 
Jesus  to  represent  the  highest  ideal  of  Christian  worship. 
The  full  and  free  communion  of  the  individual  soul 
with  the  soul  of  the  universe  seems  to  him  the  highest 
conception  of  the  reHgious  attitude.  At  all  costs  this 
idea  must  be  retained.  Without  it  Christianity  would 
cease  to  have  a  function  in  the  world.  Whatever  really 
opposes  or  impedes  it  must  be  rejected  without  hesita- 
tion and  without  compromise.  Whatever  really  aids  it 
must  be  cultivated  and  developed,  so  long  as  it  seems 
likely  to  continue  helpful  toward  this  supreme  end. 

Among  these  aids  to  the  hfe  of  the  spirit,  the  Uni- 
tarian reckons  the  institution  of  common  and  pubKc 
worship.  He  feels  a  certain  instinctive  sympathy  with 
those  men  who,  from  time  to  time,  have  sought  to 
realize  in  some  literal  fashion  the  individualism  of  Jesus ; 
but  he  cannot  help  seeing  how  even  they  have  been 


WORSHIP  241 

compelled  to  recognize  the  demands  of  man's  social 
nature.  Even  they  sought  companionship  in  solitude. 
Such  is  the  history  of  monasticism  almost  from  its 
very  beginning.  Men  were  driven  by  a  variety  of 
motives,  into  which  it  is  well  not  to  inquire  too  closely, 
to  forsake  the  company  of  their  fellows  and  seek  in 
desert  solitudes  the  inner  grace  the  world  had  failed 
to  give  them.  It  was  a  flattering  illusion,  —  as  if  they 
were  sure  of  their  own  loftiness  of  nature  and  purpose. 
It  may  well  have  answered  for  a  brief  period  of  special 
exaltation.  But  soon  the  social  instinct,  as  deep-seated 
in  the  human  heart  as  any  motive  of  personal  advantage, 
put  forth  its  insistent  claim  and  found  its  answer. 
Gradually,  without  settled  plan,  these  scattered  ''saints" 
of  the  desert  drew  together  into  unformed  groups  living 
still  in  defiant  self-assertion,  yet  coming  also  into  ever 
closer  touch  with  each  other  and  realizing  ever  more 
clearly  an  ideal  of  a  regulated  community.  Then  came 
leaders,  —  teachers  of  a  constitutional  system  for  the 
separated  life.  Then  orders,  — vast  congregations  of  men 
living  apart  from  the  usual  custom  of  society,  yet  de- 
veloping more  and  more  a  use  and  custom  of  their  own 
that  rivalled  or  surpassed  in  completeness  the  codes  of 
cities  or  of  states.  But  even  this  was  not  enough.  The 
principle  of  separation  had  proved  its  own  destruction. 
The  monk  had  failed;  the  friar,  the  brother  of  all  who 


242  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

needed  him,  came  to  take  his  place.  The  friar  began  in 
poverty,  in  humility,  and  ignorance;  but  soon  the 
wealth  of  the  spiritually  awakened  layman  poured  into 
his  satchel,  the  pride  of  power  laid  hold  upon  him,  and 
the  learning  of  Europe  was  in  his  hands.  The  Jesuit 
was  the  culmination  of  this  extraordinary  history. 
Separated  from  the  world  Kke  all  his  predecessors,  he 
was  yet  in  the  very  thick  of  the  world's  fiercest  conflicts, 
making  use  of  his  separateness  as  a  weapon  to  shape 
the  forms  of  social  organization  to  his  own  iron  scheme. 
Separation  as  a  working  force  has  been  effective  only 
in  so  far  as  its  professors  have  violated  their  own  prin- 
ciple and  put  themselves  in  relation  with  the  working 
agencies  of  the  society  about  them.  Just  as  the  Mystics 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  beginning  with  a  rejection  of  all 
scholastic  processes,  ended  by  founding  a  "school"  of 
their  own,  so  the  individuaHsts  in  worship  have  found 
themselves  driven  into  some  form  of  association  lest 
they  remain  in  a  sterile  seclusion  fatal  alike  to  them- 
selves and  to  the  idea  they  represent.  The  Unitarian 
shows  his  true  catholicity  in  recognizing  from  the  start 
the  dependence  of  the  individual,  even  in  so  purely  per- 
sonal a  matter  as  worship,  upon  the  life  of  the  com- 
munity. Only  —  and  here  is  the  gist  of  the  whole 
position  —  he  thinks  of  the  common  life  as  an  aid  to 
the  inner  spiritual  life  of  the  individual  and  only  as 


WORSHIP 


243 


such.  He  will  not  accept  it  as  a  substitute  for  the 
inner  vision.  Neither  will  he  admit  it  as  an  authority 
dictating  the  terms  upon  which  the  inner  vision  may 
enjoy  its  right  to  be.  Again  he  reminds  himself  that 
where  there  is  no  vision  the  people  perish;  that  is, 
that  the  Hfe  of  the  community  depends  upon  maintain- 
ing the  clearness  of  the  vision  which  is  and  always  must 
be  a  thing  of  the  individual.  The  Unitarian  would 
admit,  therefore,  naturally,  the  largest  Hberty  as  to 
forms.  While  his  sympathy  goes  first  to  the  simpler 
expressions  of  the  rehgious  spirit,  he  will  not  Hmit  any 
of  his  fellows  in  their  choice  of  a  more  formal  service. 
The  only  thing  he  insists  upon  is  that  the  form  shall 
not  impose  itself  upon  any  man  as  something  having 
value  in  itself. 

The  Unitarian  is  emphatically  Protestant  in  changing 
the  emphasis  of  noble  service  from  the  sacramental  to 
the  personal  and  spiritual  side.  Where  he  retains  the 
word  ''sacrament"  at  all,  he  has  completely  changed  its 
meaning  —  so  completely  that  probably  few  Unitarians 
realize  the  full  historic  significance  of  the  word.  They 
have  forgotten,  if  they  ever  knew,  that  in  the  pre- 
Reformation  Church  the  word  "sacrament"  acquired  a 
secondary  meaning  which  gave  to  the  "sacramental" 
act  a  certain  virtue  of  its  own,  so  that  the  mere  perform- 
ance of  the  act  by  the  right  person  and  in  the  right  way 


244  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

had  a  certain  effect  upon  the  person  who  received  it. 
The  whole  process  of  the  Reformation  might  be  de- 
scribed as  a  continuous  protest  against  this  view  of  a 
sacrament,  and  yet  the  dominant  parties  in  the  Refor- 
mation were  never  tired  of  insisting,  as  against  its  more 
thoroughgoing  elements,  that  they  had  not  given  it  up 
and  did  not  propose  to  do  so.  Now  the  Unitarian  be- 
longs historically  to  these  more  thoroughgoing  elements 
of  the  Reformation.  The  former  idea  of  a  sacrament 
as  an  observance  which,  even  in  ever  so  slight  a  degree, 
had  a  positive  and  effectual  virtue  in  itself  (ex  opere 
operato)  seems  to  him  so  dangerous  to  the  spiritual  hfe 
of  the  individual  that  he  can  be  satisfied  with  nothing 
less  than  its  complete  abandonment.  If  he  permits 
himself  to  use  the  word  at  all,  it  is  only  in  connection 
with  one  of  the  several  ''sacraments"  of  the  historic 
church,  the  sacrament  of  the  Eucharist,  and  even  here, 
if  he  stops  to  think,  he  will  rather  use  some  other  word. 
He  will  prefer  the  purely  historic  phrase,  the  ''Lord's 
Supper,"  or  that  other  truly  spiritual  word,  "com- 
munion," which  conveys  to  him  precisely  the  meaning 
which  has  most  significance  for  him.  In  any  case  he 
will  be  quite  clear  that  the  essence  of  the  formal  act  of 
participation  consists  wholly  in  its  memorial  character. 
"In  remembrance  of  me"  is  the  clew  to  the  Unitarian's 
understanding  of  this,  the  great  central  feature  of  his- 


WORSHIP 


245 


toric  Christian  worship.  As  such,  as  a  reminder  of  the 
life  and  death  of  Jesus  and  of  their  value  to  themselves 
personally  as  members  of  a  modern  Christian  society, 
Unitarians  have  generally  retained  this  simple  memorial 
service.  They  have  no  quarrel,  however,  with  those 
within  their  fellowship  who  do  not  feel  the  need  of 
such  formal  reminder.  They  feel  about  this,  as  they 
do  about  all  forms,  that  the  man  who  cares  least  for 
such  formal  expression  may  be  most  keenly  aHve  to  the 
spirit  it  is  intended  to  cultivate.  He  may  be  precisely 
the  person  who  least  needs  the  outward  and  occasional 
reminder,  because  his  whole  life  is  attuned  to  the  spirit 
of  the  common  Master.  What  they  dread  above  all 
things  else  is,  that  this  or  any  other  rite  should  ever 
become  a  substitute  for  genuine  feeling,  and  they  feel 
very  keenly  how  great  that  danger  is. 

On  this  point  Unitarians  have  gone  ahead  of  most 
other  Protestants.  They  have  kept  even  with  them, 
however,  in  placing  the  emphasis  of  religious  service 
upon  the  two  elements  of  preaching  and  public  ex- 
tempore prayer.  In  both  these  exercises  they  express 
that  sense  of  the  value  of  the  individual  which  is  the 
key-note  of  their  whole  appeal  to  the  rehgious  senti- 
ment. In  the  preaching  they  value  the  direct  summons 
of  one  individual  to  others.  In  public  prayer  they 
express  the  leadership  of  an  individual  guiding  others  in 


246  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

their  direct  approach  to  God.  Unitarianism  has  had  to 
share  with  other  forms  of  Protestantism  the  reproach 
that  its  sermons  are  not  sermons  at  all,  but  'lectures," 
no  doubt  excellent  in  their  way,  but  inappropriate  as  a 
part  of  a  religious  service  and  ineffective  as  a  stimulus 
to  the  rehgious  Hfe.  This  reproach  assumes  as  its 
starting-point  that  there  is  some  generally  recognized 
standard  of  what  a  sermon  ought  to  be  and  that  any 
discourse  departing  from  this  standard  must  be  set  in 
some  other  category  of  literary  form.  Unitarians 
would  probably  allow  as  wide  a  liberty  in  this  matter  as 
any  other  Christian  body.  They  are  willing  to  Hsten 
with  patience  to  a  great  variety  of  forms  of  appeal  from 
their  pulpits.  They  do  not  require  that  a  text  of  Scrip- 
ture shall  be  put  forward  as  the  real  or  nominal  bond 
of  connection  between  the  ideas  the  preacher  wishes  to 
impart.  They  would  not  limit  him  in  the  choice  of 
subjects  for  his  discourse.  His  sermons  may  be  doc- 
trinal, political,  moral,  historical,  scientific,  even  poeti- 
cal, as  the  Spirit  gives  him  utterance.  In  all  this  Uni- 
tarians do  not  differ  greatly  from  other  open-minded 
Christians  of  all  denominations  at  the  present  day. 
Even  in  those  connections  most  inclined  to  hedge  their 
preachers  about  with  limitations  of  form,  when  a  man 
arises  who  is  really  a  man,  and  who  speaks  to  his  fellow- 
men  with  authority  and  not  like  the  men  of  books,  the 


WORSHIP  247 

people  hear  him  gladly.  What  gives  to  the  preaching 
element  in  Unitarian  worship  a  certain  peculiar  im- 
portance is  the  demand  upon  the  preacher  that  he  bring 
to  his  preaching  always  something  of  the  same  spirit 
which  he  is  trying  to  interpret  to  others.  Or,  to  put  it 
in  another  way,  that  he  shall  not  be  the  mere  echo  or 
reflection  of  an  institution,  a  book,  a  creed,  or  any  tra- 
dition whatsoever.  The  writer  once  heard  an  important 
clergyman  in  an  established  and  rituaHstic  church  say 
that  he  gave  very  little  thought  indeed  to  his  sermons. 
He  read  through  *'the  lesson  of  the  day'^  the  evening 
before  and  jotted  down  the  few  random  thoughts  which 
this  suggested,  and  that  was  his  sermon.  This  was 
said,  not  at  all  by  way  of  apology  for  the  very  poor 
sermon  that  resulted,  but  distinctly  as  a  declaration  of 
principle.  It  was  meant  to  convey  the  idea  that  the 
personaKty  of  the  preacher  should  be  kept  as  far  as 
possible  in  the  background  and  not  allowed  to  ^'in- 
trude" itself  upon  the  legitimate  sphere  of  influence  of 
the  sacred  traditions  he  was  set  there  to  maintain. 

The  Unitarian  attitude  is  as  far  as  possible  from  this. 
It  sees  the  danger  the  formalist  would  avoid,  but  it 
does  not  fear  it;  or,  rather,  as  between  the  two  dangers 
of  individualism  and  formaHsm,  it  deliberately  chooses 
the  former.  The  Unitarian  perceives,  as  every  thinking 
man  must  do,  the  evil  of  a  blatant  and  defiant  egotism 


248  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

expressing  itself  in  vulgar  and  theatrical  appeals  to 
superficial  and  transient  sentiments.  He  knows  the 
fatal  lengths  to  which  a  straining  after  ''originality" 
may  mislead  an  undisciplined  talent.  He  sees  these 
things,  but  he  is  willing  to  take  the  risk  of  giving  every 
liberty  to  every  form  of  sincere  effort.  He  thinks  the 
community  is  safer  when  it  is  called  upon  to  measure 
the  men  who  appeal  to  it  for  a  hearing  than  when  it  is 
furnished  with  men  picked  out  beforehand  by  any  expert 
tribunal  whatsoever.  He  believes  that  in  the  long  run 
—  and  generally  not  so  very  long  a  run  either  —  the 
claimant  for  influence  among  men  gets  judged  about 
as  he  deserves,  and  he  wishes  him  to  have  his  chance. 
If  worship  means  ''the  approach  to  God,"  then  the 
function  of  the  sermon  is  to  present  to  the  mind  of  the 
listener  such  ideas  as  shall  aid  him  in  that  approach, 
not  at  the  moment  only,  but  so  long  as  he  shall  be  able 
to  keep  these  ideas  consciously  or  unconsciously  in  mind. 
That  is  what  we  meant  by  saying  that  the  preacher  to 
Unitarians  must  bring  something  of  the  spirit  he  is 
trying  to  interpret.  He  cannot  be  a  mere  agent.  He 
must  be  himself,  and  he  must  draw  others  because  he  is 
drawn  by  spiritual  forces  within  himself.  He  must 
have  that  subtle  quality  we  cannot  otherwise  describe 
than  as  "personality."  He  may  not  thrust  it  into  the 
foreground  without  danger  of  spoiling  its  effect;   but  it 


WORSHIP 


249 


must  be  there,  and  it  must  be  felt.  It  is  this  subtle 
quality  that  must  inform  his  treatment  of  every  sub- 
ject with  a  vitality  that  is  swift  to  communicate  itself 
to  every  responsive  listener.  It  is  because  he  has  this 
quality  that  every  subject  of  human  interest  is  open  to 
him.  He  will  not  lecture  upon  it  as  an  expert.  He 
will  not  deal  with  capital  and  labor  as  an  economist, 
but  as  a  man  who  can  see  in  economic  problems  one 
impressive  phase  of  the  struggle  to  realize  the  kingdom 
of  God  on  earth.  He  will  not  speak  of  nature  and  art 
as  an  artist,  but  as  one  who  sees  in  both  some  reflection 
of  divine  order  and  beauty.  He  will  not  deal  with  the 
rivalries  of  nations  as  a  pohtician,  but  as  an  interpreter 
of  a  divine  ideal  for  the  government  of  the  peoples  in 
righteousness  and  peace. 

These  are  lofty  demands  upon  the  Christian  preacher. 
It  is  certain  that  in  the  majority  of  cases  they  will  be 
but  imperfectly  fulfilled ;  but  the  Unitarian  can  hardly 
feel  that  this  is  a  reason  for  abandoning  them,  and 
being  satisfied  with  lower  and  more  formal  standards. 
On  the  contrary,  he  thinks  that  difficulty  of  attainment 
will  only  stimulate  to  higher  and  more  personal  effort. 
He  cannot  believe  that  the  time  has  come,  or  ever  will 
come,  when  the  influence  of  one  human  personality 
upon  others,  exercised  through  the  living  voice,  will 
cease    to    be   potent    for    good.     The   preaching    thus 


2  so 


UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 


remains  with  Unitarians  what  it  was  in  the  first  genera- 
tion of  Protestantism,  the  central  incident  of  public 
worship.  The  early  description  of  Protestants  as 
''those  who  go  to  the  Preaching"  in  distinction  from 
''those  who  go  to  the  Mass"  holds  good  for  them  in  all 
its  original  significance.  It  expresses  precisely  their 
striving  after  the  individual  and  spiritual  as  opposed  to 
the  "sacramental"  and  traditional. 

The  same  distinction  enters  also  into  the  Unitarian's 
idea  of  prayer  both  public  and  private.  Prayer  is  to 
him  the  most  personal,  the  most  sacred,  the  most  inti- 
mate demand  of  worship.  It  is  the  approach  to  God 
in  the  most  eminent  sense.  If  prayer  is  not  personal  it 
is  not,  to  the  Unitarian,  prayer  at  all.  The  "vain  repe- 
titions" against  which  Jesus  protested  with  such  con- 
sistent emphasis  seem  to  him  still  a  mockery  of  all  that 
is  most  essentially  Christian  in  the  thought  of  the 
Master.  True,  as  we  have  already  noted,  there  is  a 
legitimate  sphere  within  which  the  common  spiritual 
experiences  of  mankind  may  be  formulated  in  words 
that  will  fairly  express  many  of  the  states  of  feehng 
that  may  properly  be  described  as  religious.  Such 
formulations  undoubtedly  serve  in  turn  to  call  forth 
such  states  of  feehng,  and  the  Unitarian  would  be  quite 
willing  to  admit  that  it  is  better  to  have  one's  religious 
emotion  stirred  on  stated  occasions  than  never  to  have 


WORSHIP 


251 


it  stirred  at  all.  He  even  goes  so  far  sometimes  as 
himself  to  make  a  limited  use  of  formulas  that  seem 
to  him  most  aptly  to  express  the  feeling  he  has  at  the 
moment  in  his  mind.  He  gladly  accepts  the  fellowship 
of  men  who,  agreeing  fundamentally  with  him  in  the 
real  nature  of  religious  experience,  still  cling  to  forms  he 
no  longer  finds  useful  for  himself.  What  he  dreads  in 
himself  above  all  else  is  a  slackening  of  the  hold  upon 
him  of  that  personal  tie  which  binds  him  to  the  source 
of  all  such  experience.  He  fears  lest  in  the  strain  of 
life  he  may  drift  unconsciously  into  that  comfortable 
half-world  of  reality  and  unreality  in  which  he  might 
come  to  accept  the  phrase  for  the  thought,  the  formula 
for  the  feehng  it  once  expressed  to  some  one  not  himself. 
For  to  the  Unitarian  the  very  essence  of  prayer  is 
sincerity.  The  Roman  Catholic  theory  of  confession 
rested  upon  a  perfectly  sound  idea.  It  is  true  that 
every  human  soul  needs  frequently  to  be  confronted 
with  some  power  outside  itself  and  greater  than  itself, 
before  which  it  may  strip  off  all  concealments  and  self- 
deceptions  and  stand  in  naked  reality  waiting  for  help 
to  take  up  the  burden  and  the  strife  again  with  greater 
courage  and  a  clearer  hope.  In  rejecting  the  agency  of 
a  human  mediator,  Protestants  have  not  abandoned 
this  idea.  The  Protestant  theory  of  prayer  is  precisely 
this :    that  the  individual  human  soul  makes  its  con- 


252  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

fession  direct  to  its  God.  The  various  branches  of 
Protestant  Christianity  have  been  true  to  this  theory  in 
varying  degrees.  To  some  it  has  seemed  best  to  restrict 
the  individual  as  far  as  possible  by  supplying  formulas 
intended  to  cover  every  legitimate  need  of  the  religious 
life  and  prohibiting  or  discouraging  personal  expressions 
of  devotion  as  likely  to  confuse  the  minds  of  the  simple. 
Others  have  gone  to  the  extreme  of  Quietism,  avoiding 
all  formal  expression  and  seeking  for  clearness  in  such 
a  complete  absorption  in  the  divine  as  would  make  all 
occasional  utterances  unnecessary.  Unitarians  would 
find  their  place  somewhere  between  these  two  extremes. 
They  believe  in  prayer,  —  first  as  an  attitude  of  mind 
and  then  as  the  expression  of  that  attitude  in  words,  — 
not,  indeed,  as  a  means  of  making  it  the  more  intelligible 
to  God,  but  of  making  it  clearer  to  themselves.  In 
trying  to  define  prayer  they  cannot  get  far  away  from 
the  definition  at  the  head  of  this  chapter :  '^  Prayer  is  the 
soul's  sincere  desire."  It  is  the  desire  that  makes  the 
prayer,  and  in  this  consists  at  once  the  comfort  and 
the  awfulness  of  it.  The  comfort,  because  we  may  be 
sure  that  no  defect  of  utterance  on  our  part  can  work 
against  us  if  only  our  heart  be  pure  —  the  awfulness 
because  we  may  be  equally  sure  that  no  wordy  devices 
of  ours,  however  much  they  may  quiet  our  consciences 
for   the  moment,  can  obscure  the  base  desire  that  is 


WORSHIP  253 

really  at  the  bottom  of  our  hearts.  That  is  the  Uni- 
tarian starting-point  on  this  subject.  What  we  really 
desire  we  are  actually  praying  for,  not  at  given 
moments,  but  all  the  time.  It  is  this  desire  that  dic- 
tates the  decisions  by  which  our  character  is  deter- 
mined. We  are  what  we  are  because  of  the  desires 
that  have  actuated  us  up  till  now,  and  what  we  shall 
be  in  the  future  depends  upon  how  we  can  balance  and 
regulate  and  purify  the  desires  of  the  years  to  come. 
Starting  with  this  idea  the  Unitarian  lays  his  emphasis 
naturally,  not  so  much  on  stimulating  men  to  pray; 
for  so  long  as  they  really  desire  they  are  praying,  whether 
they  will  or  no.  Rather  he  puts  his  emphasis  on  the 
nature  of  the  things  desired  and  the  duty  of  so  formu- 
lating one's  desires  to  one's  self  as  to  be  quite  clear  what 
they  are  and  whither  they  are  likely  to  lead.  The 
Unitarian  therefore  believes  in  formal  prayer,  both 
public  and  private,  because  it  helps  him  to  know  at  any 
given  moment  whether  his  inmost  wishes  are  in  harmony 
with  that  fundamental  law  which  he  aims  to  make  the 
standard  and  the  guide  of  his  spiritual  life. 

It  is  clear  from  all  this  what  the  opinion  of  Uni- 
tarians must  be  on  the  once  much-discussed  question 
whether  the  prayers  of  men  can  alter  the  ^^plan  of  God." 
They  do  not  profess  to  know  the  plan  of  God,  nor  would 
they  set  up  their  human  judgments  as  standards  by 


254  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

which  the  governance  of  the  universe  ought  to  be  regu- 
lated. They  join  with  all  rationally  thinking  men  in 
rejecting  as  mischievous  superstition  the  notion  that  the 
wishes  of  men  expressed,  no  matter  in  what  approved 
form,  can  change  ever  so  shghtly  the  operation  of  those 
natural  laws  by  which  the  Hfe  of  mankind  is  shaped 
and  limited.  They  would  not  pray  for  rain  in  drought, 
but  they  would  pray  for  wisdom  and  strength  to  know 
and  do  the  things  that  might  help  to  make  drought  less 
frequent  and  less  harmful.  They  would  not  pray  that 
bodily  infirmity  might  be  taken  away  from  them  by 
some  sudden  change  of  material  condition,  but  they 
would  pray,  first  for  such  knowledge  of  natural  law  as 
might  help  them  to  avoid  disease,  and  then  for  patience 
to  bear  the  burden  that  the  ignorance  and  folly  of  the 
race  have  laid  upon  them. 

It  will  be  asked  then,  perhaps,  if  the  thought  of 
Unitarians  about  prayer  is  wholly  subjective;  if  they 
are  concerned  merely  with  the  reaction  upon  them- 
selves. The  answer  to  this  question  would  have  to  be 
both  "yes"  and  ''no."  Let  us  take  the  extreme  illus- 
tration which  naturally  suggests  itself  in  all  these  dis- 
cussions. Unitarians  would,  of  course,  deny  that  any 
wishes  of  men  at  a  given  time  could  affect  the  weather 
—  but  this  does  not  mean  that  men  are  therefore  to 
sink  back  into  a  dull,  fatalistic  resignation  to  the  "will 


WORSHIP  255 

of  God"  —  see  their  crops  fail,  their  cattle  perish,  their 
children  starve.  It  means  only  that  their  desires  are 
to  take  some  new  form.  They  cannot  beHeve  it  is  the 
will  of  God  that  men  should  be  born  into  the  world  to 
starve  or  to  Uve  the  Hfe  of  beasts.  Let  them,  therefore, 
pray  without  ceasing  that  the  true  will  of  God  may 
be  unfolded  to  them  as  they  shall  be  worthy  to  receive 
it.  Such  prayer,  such  intense  and  persistent  desire, 
putting  itself  into  words  and  reacting  in  unforeseen 
ways  upon  the  activities  of  mankind  does  change  even 
the  weather.  Forests  planted  on  barren  hillsides  treasure 
up  the  water  that  is  to  descend  in  the  streams  and  rise 
again  to  nourish  the  trees  and  water  more  and  more 
fields  and  so  bring  health  and  vigor  to  more  and  more 
generations  of  men.  But,  it  will  be  said,  could  not 
this  be  done  without  prayer?  The  answer  is  that  if 
we  mean  by  prayer  the  striving  of  the  human  heart  to 
find  the  will  of  God  and  adjust  itself  to  it  in  ever  widen- 
ing activities,  then  such  results  never  have  been  achieved 
without  prayer,  and  so  we  may  be  safe  in  saying  they 
never  will  be. 

.  .  .  More  things  are  wrought  by  prayer 
Than  this  world  dreams  of .  .  .  . 
For  so  the  whole  round  earth  is  every  way 
Bound  by  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God. 

The  Unitarian  thought  on   this  point  is  in  entire  har- 


256  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

mony  with  its  fundamental  principle.  The  individual 
must  first  put  himself  in  tune  with  the  harmony  of 
creation  and  then  the  aggregate,  the  mass  of  human 
society,  will  fulfil  its  mission  without  discord.  Prayer, 
the  sincere  desire  of  the  individual  soul,  becomes  the 
potent  force  whereby  the  kingdom  of  God  may  be 
established  among  the  nations  of  the  earth. 

We  have  left  to  the  last  the  aesthetic  aspects  of  Chris- 
tion  worship,  because  they  stand  last  in  the  order  of 
Unitarian  thought.  Historically  Unitarianism  cannot, 
if  it  would,  deny  its  Puritan  origin.  It  is  rooted  in  the 
traditions  of  men  to  whom  forms  meant  Httle  and 
spirit  meant  everything.  Or,  rather,  to  put  it  more 
correctly,  forms  carried  to  our  Puritan  forebears  very 
real  conceptions  of  evil.  They  dreaded  beauty  as  sug- 
gestive of  many  positive  laxities  they  were  doing  their 
best  to  avoid.  Unitarians  cherish  these  traditions  with 
affectionate  gratitude.  They  know  the  history  of  the 
struggle  they  represent,  and  would  not  willingly  lose  the 
spirit  of  simpKcity  and  sincerity  embodied  in  them. 
They  cannot,  however,  overlook  the  change  of  feeling 
in  society  at  large  upon  these  subjects.  For  good  as 
well  as  for  evil,  the  modern  world  is  giving  a  large  and 
apparently  an  increasing  place  to  the  aesthetic  side  of 
life.  Shall  Unitarians  set  themselves  against  the  current, 
reject  the  charms  of  architecture,  of  painting,  of  colored 


WORSHIP  257 

windows,  of  music,  of  theatrical  display  by  which  re- 
ligion —  Christian  and  non-Christian  —  has  sought  to 
strengthen  its  hold  upon  society  ?  Or  shall  they  say : 
These  things  are,  to  be  sure,  the  beggarly  elements  of 
religion,  but  if  they  serve  to  attract  and  hold  the  alle- 
giance of  any  who  would  be  repelled  by  the  seeming 
coldness  of  a  merely  spiritual  faith,  then  let  us  have  them 
by  all  means  ?  To  these  questions  Unitarians  as  a  body 
have  as  yet  made  no  decided  answer,  and  it  is  quite 
characteristic  of  their  methods  that  the  two  processes 
above  suggested  are  going  on  side  by  side  among  them 
and  without  injury  to  the  essential  imity  that  lies  be- 
hind them.  On  the  whole  it  may  safely  be  said  that 
the  tradition  of  simpHcity  has  been  fairly  maintained. 
Unitarians  in  general  have  an  instinctive  dread  of  forms. 
They  do  not  wish,  as  one  of  them  has  expressed  it,  to 
see  their  ministers  ^'with  gowns  on  their  minds,"  and 
as  long  as  that  healthy  condition  of  things  continues, 
we  need  not  greatly  fear  that  the  ''rival  attractions" 
either  of  ecclesiasticism  or  ''evangehcalism"  will  divert 
attention  from  any  spiritual  realities  that  are  worth 
defending.  Unitarians  are  likely  to  go  on  as  they  are 
now  doing,  emphasizing  the  essential  unity  of  men  with 
God,  and  therefore  not  greatly  concerned  with  the 
mechanisms  appropriate  to  overcome  an  opposition 
which  they  do  not  feel.     If  their  freedom  from  forms 


258  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

repels  the  sympathy  of  a  certain  type  of  miiid,  they  will 
prefer  to  wait  for  that  sympathy  or  to  do  without  it, 
rather  than  seek  to  attract  it  by  concessions  which  do 
not  really  represent  their  honest  thought. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  FUTURE   LIFE 

I  know  not  where  His  islands  lift 

Their  f ronded  palms  in  air ; 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 

Beyond  His  love  and  care. 

—  J.G.Whittier. 

The  idea  of  a  life  after  death  is  by  no  means  peculiar 
to  Christianity.  In  one  or  another  form  it  appears  in 
all  religions  with  which  we  are  acquainted.  It  seems 
to  have  its  source  in  some  universal  human  instinct 
pointing  men,  as  soon  as  they  begin  to  think  about  the 
mysteries  of  life,  to  some  idea  of  compensation  for  its 
manifest  limitations.  The  forms  which  this  idea  as- 
sumes are  many  and  varied.  Sometimes  the  life  after 
death  appears  as  the  direct  continuation  of  earthly  life, 
with  all  its  occupations,  its  struggles,  and  satisfactions. 
All  these  are  likely  to  be  magnified  in  the  glowing  haze 
of  distance  and  in  the  purified  air  of  an  imaginary 
world.  Again,  the  future  life  may  be  as  far  as  possible 
removed  from  all  earthly  analogies,  a  sublimated  exist- 
ence, where  all  the  limitations  of  human  experience  dis- 
appear  in    the   boundless   privilege   of    ^'heaven."     In 

259 


26o  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

such  a  view  of  the  future  it  is  this  complete  emancipa- 
tion from  hiunan  motive  that  makes  its  essential  quality. 
Heaven  is  desirable  precisely  because  it  is  not  in  any 
sense  like  earth.  Even  where  the  images  of  heavenly 
enjoyment  are  expressed  in  terms  of  the  most  acute  of 
earthly  pleasures,  these  are  conceived  of  as  infinitely 
different  from  anything  earth  can  really  offer. 

Sometimes  again  the  life  beyond  the  grave  is  thought 
of  as  absolutely  conditioned  by  the  Hfe  on  earth.  Hu- 
man virtue  and  human  vice  are  rewarded  in  some 
absolute  fashion.  There  is  one  world  of  the  good  spirits 
and  another  of  the  bad,  and  these  are  so  separated  that 
there  can  be  no  passage  from  one  to  the  other.  In  one 
life  all  is  bhss,  in  the  other  all  torment.  It  is  of  the 
very  essence  of  such  a  world,  that  it  has  no  place  for 
the  personal  struggle  and  personal  progress  of  the 
earthly  stage.  Yet  the  condition  of  the  soul  in  it  is 
absolutely  determined  by  the  record  of  its  human  ex- 
perience and  is,  either  way,  the  reward  of  effort  or  of 
neglect  in  the  human  struggle.  Sometimes  this  notion 
of  reward  changes  to  that  of  compensation  in  the  nar- 
rower sense.  Heaven  is  conceived  as  a  place  or  state 
in  which  the  inequalities  of  human  life  are  all  smoothed 
away.  If  a  man  has  been  poor,  he  has  a  right  to  be  rich ; 
if  he  has  been  thwarted  in  his  desires,  he  has,  as  it  were, 
a  claim  to  have  those  desires  fulfilled.     Even  the  wicked, 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE  261 

victims  on  earth  of  tendencies  they  could  not  altogether 
control,  shall  be  given  the  higher  joy  of  finding  them- 
selves living  in  harmony  with  the  divine  will.  It  is 
evident  that  in  such  a  world  as  this  all  ideas  of  cause 
and  effect  must  disappear  or  be  changed  beyond  human 
recognition.  If  it  be  said  that  a  man  is  here  happy 
because  on  earth  he  was  unhappy,  this  cannot  mean  that 
his  earthly  unhappiness  was  in  any  way  the  effective 
cause  of  his  supreme  happiness.  It  can  only  mean 
that  an  all-wise  administrator  of  the  imiverse,  governed 
by  the  principle  of  absolute  justice,  so  distributes  happi- 
ness and  imhappiness  that  every  human  soul  in  the 
long  run  gets  his  due  share  of  each.  Happiness  thus 
appears,  not  as  the  consequence  of  effort,  but  only  as 
the  free  gift  of  a  power  that  can  arrange  the  fortunes  of 
men  at  its  discretion. 

These  are  the  chief  dominant  notions  that  have 
determined  the  forms  in  which  men  have  clothed  their 
thought  as  to  the  future  Hfe.  We  may  roughly  classify 
them  by  the  words,  ''continuation,"  ''opposition," 
and  "compensation."  Into  the  forms  themselves,  mani- 
fold and  curiously  interesting  as  they  are,  we  are  not 
here  called  upon  to  enter.  Sometimes  the  thought  of 
the  future  seems  almost  to  have  determined  the  chief 
activities  of  the  living,  as,  for  example,  in  Egypt,  where 
the    idea    of    continuation    found,    perhaps,    its    most 


262  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

imposing  expression.  Sometimes  the  dead  actually  be- 
came more  important  than  the  living,  as  in  China  and 
wherever  the  worship  of  ancestors  seemed  to  turn  the 
gaze  of  men  perpetually  backward  instead  of  forward. 
Sometimes  the  thought  of  future  reward  has  led  men  to 
regulate  their  lives  on  earth  with  scrupulous  exactness; 
sometimes  it  has  turned  them  to  a  blind  fatalism  that 
has  made  them  indifferent  to  the  ordinary  motives  of 
human  progress. 

However  carefully  we  examine  the  varied  forms  of 
human  thought  about  the  future,  we  shall  never  find 
any  system  quite  consistent  with  itself  or  quite  answer- 
ing to  our  classification.  The  several  elements  we  have 
tried  to  distinguish  appear  mingled  in  varying  propor- 
tion, yet  so  that  some  one  of  them  dominates  the  rest 
and  gives  character  to  the  system  as  a  whole.  This  is 
eminently  true  of  Christianity.  The  several  peoples 
among  whom  it  made  progress  had  each  its  own  thought 
of  the  future,  and  in  these  we  can  discern  without  great 
difficulty  the  elements  of  which  the  Christian  thought 
of  immortality  was  made  up.  If  we  consult  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus,  we  find  here,  as  on  other  points,  an  idea 
held  with  great  tenacity,  but  not  defined  in  any  precise 
fashion.  Jesus  taught  with  continual  emphasis  the 
idea  of  a  heaven,  which  he  described  as  the  dwelling- 
place  of  God;   but  since  the  God  he  taught  was  spirit, 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE 


263 


it  followed  that  the  heaven  in  which  such  a  God  could 
dwell  was  a  spiritual  heaven.  In  other  words  it  was 
not  a  place,  but  a  condition.  He  described  death  as  a 
return  to  God;  i.e.  as  an  entrance  into  a  spiritual  state 
freed  from  all  material  forms  and  fitly  described  as  com- 
munion with  God.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  Jesus  could  not 
altogether  escape  from  the  imagery  of  his  people  and 
his  age.  He  used  language  which  may  easily  be  inter- 
preted into  the  grossest  materiahsm ;  but  such  language 
must  be  read  in  the  Hght  of  his  profoundly  spiritual 
conception  of  all  life.  So  read  it  becomes  full  of  lofty 
spiritual  suggestion. 

The  sense  of  continmty,  upon  which  all  thought  of  a 
future  life  ultimately  rests,  appears  then  to  be  something 
universally  human.  How  it  came,  precisely  in  what  it 
consists,  —  these  are  matters  for  the  speculative  philoso- 
pher. We  are  concerned  only  with  the  fact  itself  and 
with  the  Christian  interpretation  of  it.  As  Christianity 
began  to  assume  a  dogmatic  form,  the  doctrine  of  a 
future  life  became  one  of  its  central  points  of  attraction 
for  the  inquiring  outsider  and  of  loyalty  for  its  mem- 
bers. Of  the  three  elements  we  have  noted  as  dis- 
coverable in  men's  thought  on  the  subject,  all  entered 
in  greater  or  less  degree  into  Christian  speculation. 
The  idea  of  continuation  appears  in  those  extravagant 
miUenial  schemes  in  which  the  faithful  are  represented 


264  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

as  entering  into  ecstatic  enjoyment  of  a  life  that  was 
only  a  magnified  reproduction  of  all  the  joyful  experiences 
of  earth.  Opposition  was  shown  in  descriptions  of 
heaven  as  freed  from  the  baser  necessities  of  earthly 
hfe.  Freedom  from  work,  from  conflict,  from  com- 
petition; pure  existence  without  conditions  or  limita- 
tions, —  these  make  the  happy  contrast  with  the  life  we 
know  here.  And  then,  running  along  with  and  through 
these  other  ideas  is  the  note  of  compensation.  Chris- 
tianity was  making  its  appeal  above  all  to  the  oppressed 
and  the  neglected,  the  people  to  whom  this  world  seemed 
to  have  been  unfair.  It  was  natural  that  they  should 
be  summoned  to  the  following  of  the  prophet  of  earthly 
failure  by  the  promise  of  redress  in  a  life  to  come. 

On  the  whole  it  was  this  last  element  that  gained 
upon  the  others  and  remained  as  the  chief  claim  of 
Christianity  in  rivalry  with  other  religious  systems. 
The  wild  dreams  of  a  millenium  made  up  of  ecstatic 
material  joys  were  driven  into  the  background  by  the 
calmer  reflection  of  trained  minds.  They  remained  as 
dramatic  decoration  in  moments  of  revival  or  in  the 
poetic  raptures  of  saintly  dreamers;  but  as  articles  of 
faith  they  shared  the  fate  of  other  extravagances  that 
had  served  their  turn  in  stimulating  loyalty  and  inspir- 
ing courage  imder  assault.  The  idea  of  opposition,  — 
that  everything  in  the  future  life  must  be  the  opposite 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE  265 

of  everything  here,  —  this  Kngered  still  and  joined  with 
the  idea  of  compensation  to  make  up  the  Christian 
thought  of  a  desirable  future.  The  lack  of  this  world 
was  to  be  made  good  under  conditions  the  opposite  of 
those  that  prevail  here. 

It  will  be  seen  that  these  two  ideas  run  easily  into 
each  other ;  for  compensation  could  not  be  possible 
unless  the  conditions  of  living  were  radically  changed. 
In  a  world  of  competition,  for  example,  perfect  fairness 
was  unthinkable.  The  weaker,  in  any  sense,  must  go 
to  the  wall.  But  in  that  world  of  compensations  pre- 
cisely the  weak  were  to  find  redress  for  their  long-suffer- 
ing. It  was  to  be  a  world,  not  of  human  justice  or  even 
of  human  fairness,  but  of  infinite  mercy,  where  all  the 
inequalities  of  earth  should  be  smoothed  away  by  a 
power  capable  of  holding  the  balance  over  the  fortimes 
of  its  children.  But  how  about  those  sons  of  earth 
who  seemed  to  need  no  such  compensation,  the  rich,  the 
strong,  the  successful  ?  Why  should  they  value  a  heaven 
which  could  seem  to  offer  them  only  a  diminished  re- 
turn of  happiness?  Christianity  met  this  persistent 
inquiry  by  its  doctrine  of  the  essential  unimportance 
of  earthly  distinction.  It  preached  to  these  fortunate 
ones  the  lesson  of  humility  and  the  real  equahty 
of  all  righteous  men  in  the  sight  of  God.  It  used  its 
doctrine  of  compensation  as  a  weapon  to  compel  such 


266  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

to  righteous  living.  At  first  it  was  even  tempted  into 
counsels  of  social  equality  on  earth,  but  it  sloughed  these 
off  with  the  skin  of  its  first  great  transformations  and 
kept  only  so  much  of  them  as  it  needed  to  enforce  its 
lesson  of  a  spiritual  equality.  In  the  final  compensation 
of  heaven  the  miseries  of  the  throne  were  to  deserve 
the  same  consideration  as  the  miseries  of  the  hovel,  no 
more  and  no  less.  After  all,  the  great  lesson  was  that 
the  seeming  inequalities  of  fife  were  not  the  real  in- 
equahties.  Here  and  hereafter  it  was  the  inner  life 
that  counted,  and  this  alone  would  be  considered  in  the 
Great  Assize. 

So  far  we  have  spoken  of  a  future  Hfe  for  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  thing  to  be  desired;  but  it  is  hardly  neces- 
sary to  say  that  if  there  is  to  be  a  future  life  at  all,  it  is 
not  a  question  of  its  desirability  or  its  undesirabihty. 
The  question  is  only  what  it  is  like  and  how  we  are  to 
conduct  ourselves  here  in  view  of  its  inevitable  ap- 
proach. It  is  true  there  have  been  attempts  to  draw 
a  hard  and  fast  line  between  an  immortality  for  the 
good  and  annihilation  for  the  bad.  Such  an  alternative 
belonged  in  the  same  region  of  thought  that  produced 
the  apocalyptic  visions  of  a  sensuous  millenium.  ''An- 
nihilation," a  word  that  meant  nothing,  was  a  natural 
corollary  to  the  equally  unmeaning  phrases  of  a  vacant 
and    aimless    rapture.     Serious    Christian    thought   got 


THE   FUTURE  LIFE  267 

rid  of  both,  and  in  their  place  put  the  two  notions  of  a 
Christian  heaven  and  a  Christian  hell.  It  allowed  the 
widest  license  in  clothing  these  notions  in  beatific 
visions  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  most  lurid  imagery  on 
the  other;  but  the  essential  fact  is  that  Christianity 
accepted  the  idea  of  a  future  life  for  all  men.  The 
ghastliest  pictures  of  infernal  torment  carefully  pre- 
served the  idea  that  these  wretched  victims  were  still 
alive  and  could  not  escape  the  doom  of  life.  The  inven- 
tion and  elaboration  of  a  purgatory,  a  probationary 
stage  indefinitely  prolonged,  was  only  another  illustra- 
tion of  this  same  clinging  to  the  idea  of  life  as  still  sub- 
ject to  the  divine  laws  of  justice  and  mercy.  Whatever 
we  may  think  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  a  future  life, 
this  is  clear,  —  that  it  does  not  present  immortality  as  a 
reward,  but  as  a  fact.  It  is  not  a  question  whether  we 
shall  live  forever.  It  is  only  a  question  which  life  we 
are  to  live.  If  there  is  immortality  at  all,  it  is  for  all 
men.  It  is  not  a  promise  made  on  certain  conditions; 
it  is  as  little  within  our  control  as  our  birth  or  our  death. 
That  is  about  as  far  as  it  is  safe  to  go  in  defining  the 
historical  meaning  of  the  doctrine  of  immortahty  within 
the  Christian  limits.  The  Church,  in  its  authoritative 
capacity,  has  not  attempted  to  define  it  much  more 
rigorously.  It  has  used  it  as  an  attraction  and  as  a 
weapon,  but  it  has  been  content  to  accept  it  without 


268  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

trying  to  give  too  exact  a  picture  of  the  life  that  is  to 
be.  Outside  the  limits  of  the  Church  such  attempts 
have  not  been  wanting.  From  the  beginning  until  now 
the  desire  to  give  definite  form  to  this  universal  instinct 
has  proved  nothing  short  of  fascinating  to  speculative 
minds.  Even  our  own  scientific  days  have  not  escaped 
the  inevitable  attraction  of  this  problem.  All  the 
thought  of  personality  in  this  life  has  led  to  its  exten- 
sion into  the  life  after  death.  Theologians,  philosophers, 
scientists,  men  of  the  most  diverse  training  and  moved 
by  all  varieties  of  interest,  have  tried  their  hands  at  an 
explanation,  if  nothing  more,  of  a  belief  that  has  had 
so  profound  a  hold  upon  the  imaginations  of  their  fel- 
lows. An  explanation,  yes,  but  not  a  solution.  If  one 
reads  over,  for  instance,  the  discourses  on  immortality 
that  have  been  delivered  within  the  past  few  years  at 
one  of  our  most  important  centres  of  education,  one 
cannot  help  feeling  that  all  this  activity  of  our  best 
minds  has  not  advanced  the  real  question  a  single  step 
nearer  to  an  ultimate  answer.  Many  ingenious  devices 
have  been  put  forward  for  giving  to  the  whole  question 
a  meaning  different  from  that  which  it  has  always  had 
in  the  general  understanding  of  men.  The  terms  of 
the  problem  have  been  stated  and  re-stated  in  a  variety 
of  suggestive  ways;  but  the  thing  that  really  interests 
mankind,  if  they  are  interested  at  all,  the  ancient  de- 


THE   FUTURE  LIFE  269 

mand :  If  a  man  die,  shall  he  —  he  and  no  other  — 
really  live  again?  and  if  so  how,  when,  and  where?  — 
this  demand,  frankly  and  squarely  put,  has  not  been 
frankly  and  squarely  met.  The  field  is  open  for  specula- 
tion as  widely  as  ever. 

This  is  the  stage  at  which  the  Unitarian  thought  ap- 
proaches this  subject.  It  frankly  accepts  it  as  an  un- 
solved problem,  still  open  to  the  widest  variety  of  under- 
standing. It  has  no  solution  of  its  own  to  offer.  Properly 
speaking,  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  Unitarian  doctrine 
of  immortahty.  It  is  not  one  of  the  subjects  on  which 
the  mind  of  Unitarians  is  incHned  to  dwell.  This  dis- 
inclination comes  partly  from  reaction  against  the  un- 
due prominence  that  was  given  to  it  by  the  special  type 
of  theology  from  which  Unitarianism  revoited.  The 
fear  of  eternal  punishment  seemed  to  the  first  rebels 
against  the  traditional  theology  a  motive  in  life  only  less 
unworthy  than  the  hope  of  a  salvation  which  should 
take  the  form  of  unending  bliss  in  a  world  relieved  of 
all  the  elements  which  give  value  to  the  triumphs  of 
earthly  effort.  What  repelled  them,  and  what  has 
always  repelled  Unitarians,  is  this  implied  severance  of 
any  possible  future  existence  from  the  life  that  now  is. 
While  they  were  not  inclined  to  formulate  a  doctrine  of 
their  own,  there  were  certain  things  they  felt  strongly, 
and  it  is  these  things,  partly  negative  and  partly  posi- 


270  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

tive  in  their  expression,  that  still  constitute  the  Uni- 
tarian thought  of  immortality. 

First  of  all,  Unitarians  are  sure  that  if  there  is  an 
individual  future  life,  it  must  be  for  all  men,  good,  bad, 
and  indifferent.  If  the  good  are  to  be  permitted  to  live, 
the  bad  must  be  condemned  to  live.  But,  since  it  is  an 
article  of  Unitarian  faith  that  no  man  is  or  can  become 
altogether  good  or  altogether  bad,  they  are  unable  to 
imagine  any  dividing  line  by  which  two  future  worlds 
could  be  formed  that  would  equitably  separate  mankind 
into  their  appropriate  dwelling-places.  The  notion  of  a 
midway  third  region,  where  the  surplus  of  evil  left 
after  the  trials  of  earth  shall  somehow  be  removed  and 
the  soul  set  free  to  enjoy  the  bhss  of  heaven,  they  dis- 
miss as  a  childish  dream,  interesting  only  for  the  glimpse 
it  gives  of  an  unconquerable  faith  in  the  perfectibility  of 
human  nature  that  is  the  redeeming  touch  of  even  the 
crudest  theology.  In  short,  the  Unitarian  cannot  con- 
ceive of  anything  worthy  to  be  called  life  without  the 
element  of  diversity  among  individuals  which  is  the  very 
mark  of  a  human  society.  But  then,  again,  diversity 
seems  to  imply  necessarily  conflict,  struggle,  and  there- 
with all  that  we  include  under  the  word  ''progress."  It 
is  inconceivable  that  there  should  be  a  world  of  human 
souls,  all  content  to  stand  still,  satisfied  with  ''the  sta- 
tion to  which  it  has  pleased  God  to  call  them."     That 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE  271 

corresponds  to  no  idea  of  life  with  which  Unitarians  are 
familiar.  Rather,  it  suggests  the  very  idea  of  death,  a 
death  of  the  soul  worse  than  any  physical  decHne. 

Again,  it  seems  clear  that  any  conceivable  form  of  fut- 
ure existence  must  in  some  sense  be  a  social  existence. 
The  individual  soul  retaining  its  individuaHty  must  do 
so  at  the  price  of  conformity  to  some  social  ideal.  It 
cannot  be  thought  of  as  enjoying  or  suffering  merely  as 
an  individual.  It  must  have  relations  to  other  souls,  and 
if  we  try  to  imagine  what  these  relations  are,  we  fall  inevi- 
tably into  the  categories  of  earthly  affections  and  earthly 
duties.  Shall  we  try  to  imagine  a  heaven  without  love 
from  man  to  man  ?  And  if  love  is  to  exist,  what  is  to  call 
it  forth  ?  It  must  be  some  form  of  appeal,  such  as  service 
or  sympathy.  Unless,  indeed,  we  are  to  imagine  such  a 
boundless  promiscuity  of  charity  that  all  personality 
shall  be  lost  and  all  distinctions  among  individuals  disap- 
pear. It  is  plain  that  the  moment  we  try  in  this  way  to 
work  out  any  conception  of  the  future  based  upon  human 
ideals  we  are  involved  in  the  old  familiar  roundabout 
that  brings  us  back  to  the  picture  of  a  life  that  is  only 
the  enlarged  reproduction  of  the  life  we  are  now  Hving. 
But  is  it  possible  for  the  human  mind  really  to  live  by 
any  other  than  human  ideals?  We  have  no  others.  If 
it  be  said  that  death  brings  us  at  once  into  a  world  in 
which  absolutely  different  ideals  govern,  then  we  may  as 


272 


UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 


well  cease  to  think  about  it  while  we  are  here,  because 
we  hsive  no  terms  in  which  to  clothe  our  thought. 

It  is  this  despair  of  finding  adequate  forms  of  expression 
for  any  ideal  state  of  existence  that  has  led  thoughtful 
men  into  explanations  of  the  Christian  doctrine  of  immor- 
tality which  run  perilously  near  the  margin  of  imperson- 
ality. We  have  heard  much  in  these  days  of  a  kind  of 
universal  immortality.  We  are  reminded  of  the  analogies 
of  all  organic  life.  The  tree  does  not  die.  It  passes 
into  other  forms  of  life,  which  in  their  turn  give  place  to 
new  and  ever  new  combinations  of  elements.  We  are 
shown  the  eternal  cycle  of  the  sea,  the  cloud,  the  fertil- 
izing rain,  the  earth,  and  again  the  sea,  and  we  are  told: 
Thus  it  is  with  the  Hfe  of  man.  It,  too,  can  never  die,  but 
is  taken  up  into  the  universal  life.  Its  material  parts 
go  back  into  the  eternal  round  of  Nature,  from  which 
they  sprang.  But  what  of  its  spiritual  part,  the  only 
part  that  here  really  interests  us  ?  This,  too,  we  are  told 
lives  on  forever.  Every  human  thought  or  word  or 
action  has  its  permanent  effect  upon  the  aggregate  of 
human  experience.  No  particle  of  this  spiritual  activ- 
ity of  man  is  wasted,  any  more  than  is  any  particle  of  the 
activity  of  Nature.  Character,  —  the  accumulation  of 
spiritual  qualities  that  constitutes  the  real  man,  —  this 
never  dies,  but  goes  on  influencing  the  world  of  human 
being  and  through  this  affecting  even  the  world  of  matter 


THE   FUTURE  LIFE 


273 


to  the  remotest  verge  of  time.  And  this  is  immortality. 
The  individual  soul  lives  in  the  truest  sense  in  its  unend- 
ing influence  upon  the  universal  life. 

This  line  of  discussion  is  at  first  thought  especially 
attractive  to  the  Unitarian.  It  appeals  readily  to  his 
sense  of  the  unity  and  interdependence  of  all  that  we  call 
life.  He  is  ready  to  accept  all  there  is  in  it  of  observed 
fact  and  of  deduction  from  this  fact  to  the  processes  of 
the  spiritual  Hfe.  That  the  individual  soul  lives  on  in  in- 
fluence, dynamically,  if  one  please,  in  the  great  scheme  of 
things,  —  this  suits  perfectly  with  his  ideas  of  the  nature 
both  of  the  human  soul  and  of  the  universe  in  which  it 
forms  a  part.  But  is  this,  in  any  rational  meaning  of 
the  words,  a  doctrine  of  individual  immortahty  ?  Hon- 
esty compels  him  to  admit  that  it  is  not.  It  is  pleasant 
for  me  to  think  that  my  worthy  actions  will  go  on  doing 
good  forever.  It  is  a  valuable  discipline  to  remember 
that  my  evil  actions  must  bear  fruit  forever  in  a  more  or 
less  disordered  universe.  But  if  I,  the  same  I  that  does 
these  good  and  evil  things,  am  not  to  be  conscious  of  my 
continuing  personahty,  it  is  cold  comfort  to  think  that 
it  is  going  on  in  spite  of  me.  The  same  thing  is  equally 
true  of  the  tree  and  the  drop  of  water  in  the  ocean.  It 
is  all  true,  but  it  is  not  enough  to  constitute  in  any  serious 
way  a  solution  of  that  problem  of  individual  immortality 
that  has  puzzled  the  ages.     What  men  are  seeking  to-day, 


274  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

as  they  have  always  sought,  is  some  basis  for  their  in- 
vincible instinct  that,  having  once  lived,  they  are  going  to 
keep  on  living.  That  instinct  the  Unitarian  shares.  He  is 
no  more  concerned  to  know  where  it  came  from  than  he 
is  to  know  the  origin  of  life  in  general.  He  is  glad  to  own 
in  this,  as  in  so  many  other  matters,  his  fellowship  with 
the  honest  striving  of  all  the  ages  to  come  to  some  clear- 
ness of  thought.  As  he  looks  over  the  attempts  of  his 
fellow  Christians  to  give  definite  shape  to  the  common 
instinct  he  recognizes  many  close  analogies  to  his  own 
thinking. 

The  difference  between  Unitarian  thought  on  this  sub- 
ject and  that  of  most  other  Christians  is  in  the  degree 
of  definiteness  that  can  possibly  be  reached.  While  others 
have  formulated  their  thought  and  their  feehng  into  quite 
precise  images  of  happiness  or  misery  or  a  combination  of 
these  in  a  life  too  fatally  like  the  present,  Unitarians 
have  been  content  to  let  this  subject  remain  in  the  region 
of  instinctive  feeling,  in  which  precision  is  dangerous. 
It  has  resulted  from  this  attitude  that  the  doctrine  of 
immortality  is  one  of  those  in  which  Unitarians  do  not 
take  a  very  acute  interest.  Their  respect  for  human 
nature,  their  sense  of  the  harmony  of  the  universe,  their 
conviction  as  to  the  imperativeness  of  the  moral  law, 
their  profound  faith  in  the  goodness  of  the  earthly  life 
as  a  part  of  the  goodness  of  all  life  rightly  understood,  — 


THE  FUTURE  LIFE  275 

all  these  combine  to  fix  their  attention  rather  on  this 
life  than  on  the  life  after  death.  Their  thought  of  death 
as  a  necessary  condition  of  life  precludes  them  from 
attaching  supreme  importance  to  the  change  it  may 
bring.  They  are  willing  to  rest  in  the  confidence  of  the 
poet  as  expressed  in  the  lines  at  the  head  of  this 
chapter. 

There  is  another  modern  "proof"  of  immortality  that 
must  be  mentioned  because  it  has  a  pecuHar  charm  for  a 
certain  type  of  mind.  It  is  the  so-called  demonstration 
by  the  method  of  science.  There  are  those  who  imagine 
that  the  darkness  of  the  world  beyond  the  grave  can  be 
penetrated  by  the  same  methods  of  observation  and 
deduction  by  which  we  seek  to  understand  the  material 
life  of  the  earth.  They  remind  us  that  not  merely  this 
material  side  of  earthly  life,  but  at  least  the  border-land 
of  our  psychic  experiences,  has  been  made  the  subject  of 
scientific  investigation,  and  they  believe  that  we  have 
reached  at  least  a  few  solid  bits  of  result  as  to  the  inter- 
dependence of  the  two.  Now,  they  say,  why  should  not 
this  border  land  be  widened  ?  Why  may  not  the  same 
processes  of  psychical  and  even  of  material  investigation 
be  extended  into  the  world  beyond  ?  They  are  convinced 
that  certain  of  the  phenomena  of  spiritual  manifestation 
from  the  world  after  death  into  the  world  of  earthly 
experience  are  established  beyond  the  reach  of  criticism. 


276  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

However  few  these  established  facts  of  spiritual  commu- 
nication of  the  dead  with  the  living  may  be ;  however 
slight  their  revelations  of  the  conditions  prevailing  in  that 
other  world,  it  is  enough  for  these  observers  that  some- 
thing is  established.  They  point  to  the  analogies  of  other 
sciences ;  how  these  have  crept  on  from  point  to  point, 
and  they  say :  Here  at  last  we  are  on  firm  ground.  If 
only  one  disembodied  spirit  has  communicated  with  men 
on  earth,  there  we  have  the  absolute  demonstration  that 
that  spirit  is  still  going  on,  the  same  individual  personal- 
ity it  was  during  its  earthly  Kfe.  And  if  this  one,  then  all. 
They  are  convinced  that  it  needs  only  the  proper  appli- 
cation of  the  scientific  method  to  bring  the  whole  popu- 
lation of  the  spirit  world  into  active  communication  with 
the  whole  population  of  this.  So  far  this  appalling  calam- 
ity has  been  averted,  but  it  is  easy  to  see  how  readily 
minds  otherwise  sound  may  be  drawn  into  this  trap  of 
pseudo-science.  It  is  less  their  fault  than  it  is  the  fault 
of  better  trained  men,  who  have  played  with  phenomena 
they  ought  to  have  known  to  be  beyond  the  reach  of 
mortal  powers,  as  if  they  were  actually  within  the  scope 
of  human  methods.  It  was  inevitable  that  individual 
Unitarians,  with  their  respect  for  true  science,  should  have 
fallen  under  the  spell  of  this  fatal  delusion  ;  but  it  may  be 
said  with  entire  confidence  that  Unitarians  as  a  whole 
have  not  allowed  its  superficial  attraction  to  take  any  hold 


THE   FUTURE  LIFE  277 

on  them  whatever.  They  have  discerned  instinctively 
that  the  nature  of  the  evidence  on  which  all  such  conclu- 
sions must  rest  is  hopelessly  far  removed  from  the  con- 
vincing quaHty  of  true  scientific  evidence.  They  have 
distrusted  the  plausible  glibness  with  which  the  leaders 
in  psychic  investigations  have  often  masked  their  actual 
credulity  and  readiness  to  see  things  that  were  not  there. 
Even  in  cases  that  seemed  to  challenge  all  their  powers 
of  resistance,  they  have  on  the  whole  been  able  to  keep 
their  heads  and  to  distinguish  between  actual  proof  and 
the  inabihty  to  disprove.  Because  certain  phenomena 
could  not  be  accounted  for  on  any  clearly  defined  grounds 
they  have  not  accepted  this  as  proof  that  they  were 
caused  by  the  action  of  the  spirits  of  the  departed.  They 
have  been  content  to  wait  and  meanwhile  to  trust  their 
future  in  the  same  hands  that  have  guided  their  past  and 
are  leading  them  in  their  present  struggle  toward  the  best 
that  is  in  them. 

The  one  argument  for  personal  immortality  that  im- 
presses the  Unitarian  is  the  universality  of  the  human 
instinct  of  indestructibility.  He  cannot  resist  the  feel- 
ing that  what  all  men  have  always  demanded  and  believed 
in  with  such  intensity  must  have  its  roots  far  down  in 
the  absolute  facts  of  universal  being.  Annihilation  is 
unthinkable.  Absorption  in  the  mass  of  universal  life 
is  an  evasion  of  the  question.     There  is  nothing  in  Uni- 


278  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

tarian  thought  that  contradicts  the  idea  of  continuing 
personaHty.  All  it  asks  is  that  it  shall  not  be  called  upon 
to  give  to  this  idea  any  precise  and  definite  form.  It 
refuses  to  think  of  this  life  as  unworthy,  merely  because 
it  may  be  only  a  moment  in  the  course  of  eternal  being. 
It  fails  to  see  why  this  moment  is  not  likely  to  be  as 
worthy  as  any  other.  Its  obvious  imperfections  burden 
us  because  we  know  them ;  but  this  is  not  to  say  that  any 
conceivable  form  of  future  life  would  be  without  imper- 
fections. Imperfection  is  of  the  very  essence  of  life. 
Without  it  there  would  be  nothing  to  live  for,  no  goal 
toward  which  to  strive,  no  happiness  in  the  overcoming 
of  obstacles,  nothing  which,  so  far  as  we  can  formulate 
it,  would  make  life  worth  living.  At  all  events  Unitarians 
are  sure  that  whatever  the  future  may  have  in  store  for 
them  must  somehow  depend  upon  the  use  they  make 
of  the  opportunities  offered  them  here  and  now.  In 
this  thought  they  find  the  real  significance  of  faith  in  a 
Hfe  to  come.  In  truly  comprehending  the  harmony  of 
law  and  love  and  work  here  they  believe  they  will  gain 
the  most  confident  assurance  for  the  hereafter. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   THOUGHT  OF  GOD 

One  thought  I  have,  my  ample  creed, 

So  deep  it  is  and  broad, 
And  equal  to  my  every  need, — 

It  is  the  thought  of  God. 

—  Frederick  L.  Eosmer. 

We  give  to  the  subject  of  the  Thought  of  God  the 
final  place  in  the  order  of  our  reflections  because  we  reach 
it  through  the  series  of  lesser  problems  we  have  thus  far 
been  following.  We  began  with  the  nature  of  man,  his 
origin,  his  complex  personahty,  his  limitations  and  his 
hope.  We  end  with  the  idea  of  God,  which  gives  to 
man  the  centre  about  which  he  may  group  all  that  is 
highest  in  the  life  of  the  spirit  as  it  is  to  be  lived  here  on 
earth.  The  order  of  our  thought  on  this  subject  will  be 
similar  to  that  followed  in  our  discussion  of  the  future 
life.  Here  also  we  are  dealing  with  a  problem  that  has 
profoundly  interested  thinkers  of  every  age  and  race, 
as  soon  as  the  age  or  the  race  passed  from  the  stage  of 
bUnd  acceptance  of  tradition  to  that  of  reflection  upon 
the  how  and  the  wherefore  of  its  highest  ideal  possessions. 
Here  also  we  must  give  up  from  the  beginning  any  claim 

279 


28o  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

to  absolute,  demonstrable  knowledge  and  confess  our- 
selves frankly  to  be  moving  in  the  realm  of  faith,  — yet  of 
a  faith  none  the  less  strong  because  it  is  not  subject  to 
material  or  logical  methods  of  proof. 

We  start  once  more  from  a  great  universal  fact.  Man- 
kind, so  far  as  we  have  any  acquaintance  with  it,  has 
always  made  for  itself  some  formulation  of  a  divine  ideal, 
no  matter  how  crude  this  might  be.  Even  though,  as 
sometimes  happened,  the  figure  of  Deity  was  something 
apparently  lower  than  the  men  it  served,  so  that  they 
could  command  it  to  do  their  bidding,  still,  after  all,  it 
could  do  something  for  them  that  they  could  not  do  for 
themselves.  It  represented  to  them  powers  beyond  their 
understanding  or  control.  Their  lives  were  somehow 
bound  up  with  its  larger  sanctions.  And  when  we  pass 
from  these  lower  stages  of  divine  representation  to  the 
higher  reaches  of  spiritual  conception,  we  see  still  more 
clearly  how  insistent  has  been  this  demand  of  the  human 
mind  and  soul  for  some  understandable  figuring  forth 
of  a  universal  ideal.  It  used  to  be  the  fashion  to  classify 
all  such  attempts  according  to  their  relation  to  our  own 
accepted  traditions  of  the  divine  nature  and  dealing. 
We  assumed  with  a  certain  arrogance,  the  natural  arro- 
gance of  all  ignorance,  that  what  was  different  from  our 
own  must  necessarily  be  absolutely  less  worthy.  We 
took  it  for  granted  that  we  had  heard  the  last  word  of 


THE   THOUGHT  OF  GOD  281 

divine  revelation  of  itself,  and  that  all  which  preceded  this 
must  therefore  be  delusion,  in  which  error  and  vice  were 
about  equally  divided.  In  short,  we  were  inclined  to 
assume  a  certain  absolute  standard  of  true  and  right  in 
men's  thought  of  God  and  to  try  all  shades  of  difference 
by  that  standard.  Or,  rather,  to  put  it  quite  frankly, 
we  went  back  of  all  human  thought  and,  starting  with 
God  himself  as  absolute  being,  we  imagined  that  he  had 
given  to  us  and  to  us  alone  such  a  complete  definition  of 
himself  that  neither  we  nor  any  other  human  being  had 
either  the  need  or  the  right  to  think  about  the  matter 
at  all.  All  we  had  to  do  was  to  accept  what  had  come  to 
us  by  the  flattering  method  of  a  special  revelation, 
entrusted  once  for  all  to  a  book  or  to  a  church  or  to  a 
specific  line  of  prophets  or  in  whatever  other  way  reve- 
lation might  be  guaranteed  to  a  waiting  world.  To  admit 
that  the  divine  ideal  was  subject  to  the  varying  inter- 
pretations of  men  seemed  to  imply  an  uncertainty,  a 
variation  in  Deity  itself,  which  must  be  fatal  to  the  re- 
spect of  mankind.  It  used  to  be  accepted  as  a  fact  of 
nature  that  God  made  man  in  his  own  image;  to  have 
said  that  on  the  contrary  man  had  always  made  his  God 
in  his  own  image  would  have  carried  with  it  an  almost 
blasphemous  suggestion. 

This  attitude  of  mind  has  in  these  latter  days  been 
pretty  radically  changed.     A  new  science,  that  of  Com- 


282  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

parative  Religion,  or,  to  give  it  its  more  modest  title,  the 
History  of  Religions,  has  made  its  way  quite  naturally 
and  without  flourish  of  trumpets  into  the  accepted  group 
of  definable  sciences,  and  is  going  on  from  day  to  day  with 
ever  new  suggestions  clearing  up  obscurities  and  opening 
the  ways  of  God  to  men.  The  lesson  of  this  new  science 
is  above  all  else  the  lesson  of  all  true  learning,  namely, 
respect  for  other  points  of  view  than  our  own.  It  is 
teaching  those  who  needed  to  learn  it  that  whatever  may 
be  the  absolute  nature  of  the  power  or  powers  that  encom- 
pass the  earthly  Kfe  of  men,  that  nature  is  not  revealed  to 
any  one  part  of  the  human  race  in  any  such  final  or  com- 
plete fashion  as  to  exclude  the  honest  differences  of  the 
rest.  It  is  teaching  us  first  of  all  the  unity  of  the  relig- 
ious instinct.  It  is  showing  us  that  the  impulse  which 
leads  the  primitive  savage  to  reach  out  beyond  himself 
into  a  world  unseen  indeed,  but  of  whose  existence  he  is 
almost  more  certain  than  he  is  of  the  visible  world  about 
him,  is  in  its  essence  the  same  imxpulse  that  guides  a 
Plato  or  a  Jesus,  a  Marcus  Aurelius,  or  a  Savonarola. 
But  this  is  teaching  us  something  more  than  the  lesson  of 
respect,  for  respect  may  easily  run  over  into  a  kind  of 
gentle  tolerance  as  narrow  as  the  ancient  hatreds  and  less 
fruitful.  Knowledge  of  the  forms  of  religion  is  showing 
us  that  our  own  religious  ideas  are  inextricably  bound  up 
with  those  of  other  peoples  and  other  times,  so  that  we 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD  283 

cannot  even  understand  our  own  thoughts  about  rehgion 
until  we  have  gained  some  of  this  wider  vision.  We 
are  learning  to  think  of  these  other  ways  of  reaching  out 
to  God,  not  as  divergences  from  a  given  standard  to  be 
tolerated  by  our  charity,  but  as  indispensable  contribu- 
tions towards  a  completer  understanding  of  the  divine 
mystery. 

The  variations  in  these  methods  of  coming  into  rela- 
tion with  the  powers  that  control  the  life  of  men  seem  at 
first  sight  to  be  infinite  in  number  and  in  character ;  but 
as  we  come  closer  to  them  they  fall  quite  naturally  into 
three  principal  classes.  For  our  purposes  we  may  think 
of  the  forms  of  Deity  as  grouped  under  the  heads  of  poly- 
theism, duahsm,  and  unity.  By  polytheism  we  under- 
stand that  conception  of  Deity  which  presents  it  to  us 
in  practice  under  many  aspects,  each  clothed  in  a  form 
and  accompanied  by  a  symbolism  peculiar  to  itself.  In 
other  words  polytheism  gives  us  a  series  of  personifications 
of  Deity,  each  appealing  to  some  specific  sense  of  the  di- 
vine in  man  and  offering  some  peculiar  response  to  a 
specific  demand  of  human  nature.  By  duahsm  we  mean 
that  idea  of  the  divine  which  represents  it  as  divided  into 
two  essentially  opposed  and  irreconcilable  elements, 
warring  with  each  other  for  the  control  of  the  world  of 
Nature  and  of  Man.  This  opposition  is  conceived  of  as 
eternal,  without  beginning  or  end,  the  inevitable  expla- 


2S4  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

nation  of  the  contradictions  and  imperfections  of  our 
mortal  experience.  By  unity  we  imply  a  notion  of  Deity 
in  which  all  variations  are  excluded  and  all  oppositions 
reconciled,  so  that  in  place  of  the  multiplicity  of  poly- 
theism and  the  discord  of  dualism  our  minds  are  fixed 
upon  the  eternal  sufficiency  and  the  eternal  harmony 
of  a  single  divine  ideal. 

It  would  be  possible  to  present  these  three  aspects  of 
the  divine  nature  as  so  many  successive  stages  of  human 
reflection  upon  the  problem  of  the  divine.  It  might  be 
shown  with  a  certain  approach  to  truth  that  polytheisms 
are  the  natural  product  of  that  childlike  faith  in  the 
reality  of  occult  forces  behind  the  phenomena  of  nature 
which  leads  men  to  personify  these  forces  and  to  deal 
with  them  on  equal  terms.  Polytheism  has  in  it  a  some- 
thing essentially  popular.  No  matter  how  carefully 
priesthoods  and  governments  might  seek  to  safeguard  the 
integrity  of  the  official  company  of  the  gods,  they  could 
not  prevent  the  popular  mind  from  working  actively 
and  fruitfully  in  the  creation  of  new  divine  images  or 
the  cherishing  of  older,  perhaps  forbidden,  ones.  The  his- 
tory of  polytheisms  is  full  of  such  illustrations  of  the  ap- 
pealing nature  of  its  principle  to  the  simple  minds  and 
hearts  of  natural  men.  One  is  almost  tempted  to  say  that 
this  is  the  form  of  religion  best  adapted  to  the  daily  needs 
of  plain,  unsophisticated  human  nature.     Its  wide  hospi- 


THE  THOUGHT  OF  GOD  285 

taKty  to  divine  suggestions,  its  elasticity,  enabling  it  to 
add  ever  new  figures  to  its  pantheon  as  new  relations  of 
life  might  arise,  the  readiness  with  which  it  could  trans- 
late the  deities  of  other  polytheisms  into  the  terms  of 
its  own,  all  these  are  qualities  that  render  the  notion  of 
a  multiplicity  of  deities  most  attaching  to  the  student 
of  religious  history.  One  quite  comprehends  the  feeling  of 
the  gentle  poet  of  nature  as  he  thinks  of  the  compara- 
tive forlornness  of  his  own  inherited  creed  and  almost 
longs  to 

Have  sight  of  Proteus  rising  from  the  sea, 
And  hear  old  Triton  blow  his  wreathed  horn. 

It  requires  a  considerable  wrench  to  pass  from  this 
naive  contentment  with  the  humane  guidance  of  the 
universe  to  the  atmosphere  of  perpetual  conflict  suggested 
by  the  duahstic  scheme  of  things.  The  very  essence  of 
this  idea  is  reflective,  almost  scholastic,  in  its  suggestion. 
It  hardly  seems  possible  that  men  could  have  arrived  at 
it  except  by  a  gradual  elimination  of  the  variations  in- 
volved in  polytheism.  The  simplification  of  the  divine 
idea  here  presented  could  only  be  the  result,  we  feel,  of 
a  persistent  dwelling  upon  the  notion  of  conflict  as  seen 
in  the  world  of  human  effort  and  implying  therefore  a 
corresponding  conflict  in  the  world  of  divine  control. 
In  place  of  the  implied  harmony  of  the  polytheistic  uni- 
verse, we  meet  here  a  universe  in  which  discord  is  the 


286  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

dominant  note.  The  popularity  of  such  a  system  implies, 
so  we  instinctively  feel,  a  sombre  and  almost  fatalistic 
view  of  life  among  the  people  that  could  accept  it.  A 
dualism  seems  to  us  to  exist  only  to  be  resolved  into  some- 
thing else.  It  cannot,  at  least  to  our  minds,  carry  with 
it  the  idea  of  permanence  essential  to  any  convincing 
theory  of  a  divinely  ordered  universe. 

And,  yet,  precisely  because  it  is  a  simplification,  dual- 
ism may  be  a  stage  towards  a  still  greater  sublimation 
of  the  divine  ideal.  Through  it  the  human  mind  may 
advance  to  the  idea  of  unity.  Unity  appears  as  the 
resolution,  not  only  of  duahsm,  but  of  polytheism  as 
well.  It  represents  the  victory  at  once  over  diversity 
and  opposition.  It  is  not,  on  the  face  of  it,  popular  in 
its  appeal.  It  is  not  content  to  rest  where  the  philos- 
ophy of  duahsm  rested,  with  the  fact  of  conflict  and  the 
mere  transplanting  of  that  into  the  world  of  Deity.  It 
relies  upon  the  higher  impulses  of  the  thoughtful  and  the 
loyal  among  the  people.  It  needs  the  continual  inspi- 
ration of  prophetic  voices  to  keep  it  before  the  people 's 
mind  as  the  ideal  toward  which  they  are  bidden  to 
strive  and  for  which  they  are  summoned  to  labor  and  to 
sacrifice.  The  long  line  of  Hebrew  prophecy  is  our  most 
familiar  witness  to  the  loftiness  of  this  ideal  and  to  the 
difficulty  of  maintaining  it  in  its  freshness  and  ^  vigor 
in   the  popular   heart.     The   highest   note   of   Moslem 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD  287 

piety  is  always  struck  when  it  goes  back  to  the  origi- 
nal summons  of  its  prophet  to  the  worship  of  the  one 
and  only  God.  The  most  eloquent  appeal  of  Christian 
devotion  is  found  in  the  unbroken  line  of  argum.ent 
and  exhortation  needed  to  draw  men  out  of  the  snares 
alike  of  persistent  polytheism  and  still  more  insidious 
dualism. 

This  presentation  of  the  three  conceptions  of  deity 
as  so  many  successive  stages  of  reflection  upon  the  divine 
nature  has  much  that  is  attractive,  but  it  is  not  quite 
exhaustive  or  convincing.  We  speak  Hghtly  of  the  simple 
faith  of  the  primitive  polytheist,  but  we  have  no  means 
of  being  sure  that  his  family  of  gods  is  not  itself  an  evolu- 
tion out  of  a  still  earlier  idea  of  unity.  Perhaps,  after 
all,  unity  is  simpler  than  diversity,  and,  for  all  we  know, 
the  peoples  we  call  primitive  are  as  far  removed  from  a 
previous  stage  of  unified  religious  behef  as  we  are  from 
their  observable  stage  of  polytheistic  faith.  At  all 
events,  even  in  the  most  elaborate  of  polytheisms  with 
which  we  are  acquainted,  it  is  not  difficult  to  recognize  a 
persistent  notion  of  unity.  Certainly,  as  soon  as  men 
under  a  polytheistic  religion  begin  to  think  about  the 
nature  of  their  faith  and  to  put  their  thought  into  words, 
they  come  inevitably  to  an  idea  of  unity  underlying  the 
diversity  of  their  many  personifications.  The  mind  of 
man,  as  soon  as  it  seeks  for  causes,  goes  back  by  a  law  of 


288  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

its  own  being  to  a  First  Cause  and  is  forced  to  relate  all 
other  being  to  this. 

The  mind  is  driven  to  the  idea  of  unity  because  it  is 
otherwise  unable  to  correlate  the  diverse  forces  it  feels 
and  so  far  has  been  content  to  worship,  each  within  its 
own  sphere.  What  shall  it  say?  Are  these  forces  all 
equal  and  independent?  In  that  case  they  must  inevi- 
tably come  into  conflict,  one  with  the  other,  and  there 
seems  to  be  no  rational  way  out  of  this  conflict.  Or 
are  they  all  parts  of  one  original  and  pervading  force, 
which  acts  through  them  to  fulfil  its  various  functions? 
If  so,  then  they  have  no  real  existence  for  themselves,  but 
are  merely  so  many  expressions  of  a  dominant,  though 
concealed,  Unity  behind  them  all.  Or,  is  there  one  among 
these  multitudinous  deities  that  is  superior  to  all  the  rest 
and  from  whom  they  derive  their  rights  and  powers? 
Then  again  we  reduce  the  polytheism  to  a  unity,  of 
which  the  variations  are  but  the  subject  agents,  doing 
its  will  and  responsible  to  it.  It  is,  of  course,  at  the 
highest  points  in  the  history  of  the  religious  thought  of 
a  polytheistic  people,  the  points  at  which  reflection  in 
the  minds  of  philosophers  has  come  to  take  the  place  of 
an  unquestioning  faith,  that  we  find  the  Hterary  evidence 
of  this  transition  from  complex  to  simple  ways  of  present- 
ing the  divine  idea.  Yet  we  may  well  doubt  whether  even 
the  most  childlike  acceptance  of  the  popular  mythol- 


THE  THOUGHT  OF  GOD  289 

ogies  was  not  always  accompanied  by  this  same  con- 
sciousness of  an  underlying  or  supervising  or  pervading 
Unity.  Men  liked  to  deal  directly  with  their  familiar 
spirits  of  earth  and  air  and  water.  They  liked  to  group 
these  again  under  the  headship  of  a  family  of  superior 
gods,  like  the  group  of  princes  who  directed  the  affairs 
of  their  several  bands  of  followers;  but  then  again,  far 
above  all  these,  there  was  the  remote  and  solemn  Great 
Spirit,  too  far  away  for  the  immediate  confidence  of 
his  human  subjects,  but  as  necessary  to  certify  and 
guarantee  the  powers  of  the  rest  as  was  the  earthly 
sovereign  prince  to  hold  together  the  doubtful  allegiance 
of  the  local  chieftains. 

Ordinarily  this  consciousness  of  the  divine  unity  would 
not  become  acute.  For  all  the  ordinary  dealings  of  Hfe, 
the  kindlier  lower  spirits,  akin  to  the  men  they  served, 
were  enough.  It  was  only  under  the  stress  of  national 
danger  or  racial  enthusiasm  that  the  voices  of  poet  or 
prophet  or  philosopher  summoned  the  people  to  rally 
around  Jehovah  or  Ammon  or  the  all-pervading  Sun-god 
or  Zeus,  father  of  gods  and  men,  as  the  only  sufficient 
expression  of  the  people's  unity.  At  such  times  the 
lesser  powers  are  momentarily  obscured,  only  to  fall 
into  their  place  once  more  when  the  normal  conditions 
of  life  are  restored.  Sometimes,  as  in  the  cases  of 
Christianity  and  Islam,   the  appeal  to  unity  prevails. 


290  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

The  people,  not  the  gifted  ones,  but  the  plain  workers 
and  sufferers,  seize  upon  the  idea  of  a  single  divine  spirit 
interested  in  them  as  individuals,  as  an  escape  from  the 
ills  of  a  divided  and  ineffectual  divine  control.  But  it 
will  be  noticed  that  the  conception  of  God  thus  success- 
fully presented  does  not  correspond  with  any  one  of 
our  supposed  means  of  rehef  from  polytheism.  He  is 
not  one  of  a  group  of  hitherto  equal  deities,  getting  the 
better  of  the  rest  by  his  superior  power  or  wisdom. 
Neither  is  he  the  One  of  which  these  are  the  expressions 
and  the  servants.  He  is  the  One  by  the  side  of  whom 
there  are  no  others.  There  is  but  one  God,  and  there- 
fore the  rest  are  the  mere  imaginations  of  men,  without 
reaHty.  This  God  is  not  the  expression  of  the  religious 
consciousness  of  a  single  race  or  nation.  He  is  the  one 
all-sufhcient  Source  and  Cause  and  Upholder  of  all  races. 
Before  Him  all  earthly  distinctions  disappear.  He  is 
the  Father,  the  Friend,  the  Judge,  the  Redeemer  of  the 
people.  Thus  polytheism  is  not  only  readily  resolvable 
into  unity.  It  carries  with  it  the  germs  of  a  unity  with- 
out which  it  could  not  hold  together,  any  more  than  a 
human  society  could  hold  together  without  some  prin- 
ciple of  unity  strong  enough  to  overcome  all  its  tenden- 
cies to  disruption. 

But  what  can  we  say  of  dualism,  first  in  its  relation 
to   polytheism?     The   evolution   of   a   dualism   from  a 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD  291 

polytheism  is  far  less  readily  understood,  and  yet  in  fact 
such  evolution  has  taken  place.  Within  the  history  of 
Christianity,  for  example,  we  have  the  phenomenon  of 
Manicheism  serving  as  a  stepping-stone  to  orthodox 
faith.  Such  an  evolution  could  hardly  take  place  except 
in  the  course  of  a  search  after  unity.  One  of  the  obvious 
difficulties  in  any  clearly  marked  polytheism  is  found, 
as  we  have  seen,  in  the  inevitable  conflicts  that  must 
suggest  themselves  between  the  various  forms  of  mani- 
festation of  divine  power.  As  soon  as  one  begins  to  trans- 
late these  conflicts  into  the  ordinary  language  of  humanity, 
they  are  pretty  certain  to  assume  the  form  of  antagonisms 
to  which  we  involuntarily  give  the  names  of  ''good" 
and  "evil."  We  think  of  the  divine  activities,  that  is, 
in  terms  of  advantage  or  disadvantage  to  ourselves. 
Starting  from  this  point  of  view  we  may  readily  imagine 
ourselves  ranging  all  the  powers  of  the  unseen  world  into 
two  lines,  the  one  working  for  us,  the  other  against  us. 
Being  engaged  thus  in  hostile  activities,  so  far  as  we 
are  concerned,  they  must,  from  our  level,  appear  hostile 
to  each  other.  The  implied  harmony  of  the  polytheistic 
heaven  is  broken  up  into  a  continuous  warfare  between 
two  opposing  armies.  But  these  armies  must  have 
leaders,  just  as  the  host  of  the  earlier  heaven  had  its 
leader,  and  thus  we  arrive  at  the  notion  of  two  supreme 
antagonistic  deities  dividing  the  empire  of  the  universe 


292  UNITARIAN   THOUGHT 

between  them.  They  are  engaged  in  a  conflict,  but 
there  is  no  reason  to  expect  the  absolute  victory  of  either. 
The  condition  of  conflict  is  the  very  essence  of  the  duaHstic 
scheme  of  things,  and  its  resolution  would  mean  the  end 
of  the  universe  as  we  picture  it  to  ourselves.  It  is  not 
difflcult  to  follow  this  course  of  thought  by  which  a 
polytheism  may  be  resolved  into  a  duahsm,  but  one 
cannot  help  feeling  that  it  is  not  a  course  of  thought  dic- 
tated by  the  nature  of  the  polytheistic  problem  itself. 
If  it  be  said  that  polytheism  contains  inevitably  and  of 
necessity  the  challenge  to  work  it  out  into  unity,  the 
same  cannot  be  said  of  its  relation  to  duahsm. 

If  now  we  come  to  the  question  of  the  relation  of 
dualism  to  unity,  we  meet  a  new  set  of  difficulties. 
Polytheism  seems  to  point  directly  toward  a  solution 
into  unity,  but  dualism  appears  at  first  as  a  system  com- 
plete in  itself.  If  we  can  once  accustom  our  minds  to 
the  idea  of  an  eternal  opposition  of  good  and  evil  as 
expressed  in  a  government  of  the  universe  by  two  spirits 
eternally  hostile  to  each  other,  there  seems  to  be  nothing 
further  to  do.  That  one  of  these  ruling  powers  should 
overcome  the  other  would  imply  the  destruction  of  the 
system  which  we  have  accepted  as  permanent.  And 
yet,  so  insistent  does  the  demand  for  unity  appear  to 
be,  that  in  the  most  highly  developed  dualistic  schemes 
with  which  we  are  acquainted  there  has  come  a  time 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD 


293 


in  which  men's  thought  refused  to  be  bound  within  the 
narrow  limits  of  an  eternal  deadlock  and  moved  for- 
ward to  the  notion  of  an  ultimate  victory  of  the  good 
over  the  evil  powers.  It  is  obvious  that  if  this  possi- 
bility is  once  admitted,  no  matter  how  far  into  the  future 
this  victory  may  be  removed,  the  very  fact  that  it  is 
coming  implies  a  superiority  of  the  good  over  the  evil 
which  dulls  the  edge  of  the  alleged  dualistic  equality. 
In  other  words,  a  perfect  dualism  is  no  more  possible 
than  a  perfect  polytheism.  It  is  a  far  simpler  idea. 
It  relegates  aU  the  subordinate  figures  of  the  pantheon 
to  a  perfectly  clear  subjection  under  the  lead  of  two 
great  controlling  spirits.  It  has  its  basis  in  an  antago- 
nism that  every  human  being  can  at  once  comprehend. 
It  presents  the  world  of  spirits  under  forms  easily  par- 
alleled in  human  experience.  And  yet,  after  all,  it  does 
not  satisfy,  and  it  never  has  quite  satisfied,  the  human 
craving  after  an  ultimate  something  that  shall  be  lifted 
above  all  antagonisms  into  the  clearer  air  of  absolute, 
controlling  law. 

So  we  come  along  these  highways  of  multiplicity  and 
antagonism  to  the  way  of  unity.  It  has  never  been  a 
broad  highway,  travelled  by  great  and  exulting  throngs. 
It  has  rather  been  a  steep  and  rugged  path,  where  only 
those  who  have  had  a  clear  vision  of  calm  heights  beyond 
have  been  content  to  cHmb.     For,  in  fact,  no  sooner  have 


294  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

men  fancied  that  they  had  won  the  victory  over  their 
many  gods  and  their  dual  gods  than  they  have  found 
the  vision  of  the  one  single  divine  being  too  splendid  for 
their  mortal  gaze  and  have  begun  to  throw  veils  of 
compromise  and  mediation  between  it  and  them.  That 
is  what  happened  with  Christianity.  Preached  by  a 
Semite  to  Semites,  it  was  the  reassertion  of  that 
principle  of  the  divine  unity  of  which  the  Semitic  race 
seems  to  be  the  most  highly  endowed  representative. 
As  a  Hebrew  preaching  to  Hebrews,  Jesus  made  use 
of  all  the  highest  imagery  of  Hebrew  tradition  to 
enforce  this  ideal,  which  in  every  moment  of  storm 
and  stress  had  ralHed  the  best  there  was  in  his  people 
to  new  demonstrations  of  national  energy.  Jesus  was 
speaking  to  Hebrews  already  powerfully  affected  by 
the  examples  of  polytheism  and  duahsm  forced  upon 
them  by  other  peoples  with  whom  they  had  come  into 
vital  contact.  Without  compromise  and  without  the 
refinements  of  philosophic  speculation,  he  held  before 
them  the  grand,  simple,  divine  ideal  that  had  inspired 
their  fathers  and  would,  so  he  confidently  taught,  bring 
them  once  more  back  into  the  position  of  influence  they 
had  lost. 

Jesus  fell  a  victim,  not  to  human  baseness,  but  to  legal- 
ism on  the  one  hand  and  philosophical  acuteness  on  the 
other.     His  word,   rejected  by  the  guides  of  Hebrew 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD 


295 


religious  thought  and  by  the  trained  philosophers  of  the 
Greco-Roman  schools,  went  on.  Singularly  enough  each 
side  borrowed  from  the  other  enough  to  make  it  acceptable. 
The  Gentile,  already  well  on  the  way  toward  a  unified 
conception  of  Deity,  found  his  thought  along  this 
line  now  fortified  by  the  ancient  Hebrew  faith  in  the 
oneness  of  God.  The  Hebrew,  already  profiting  by  the 
subtler  processes  of  Greek  speculation,  found  new  inter- 
pretations of  the  narrow  dogmatism  of  his  fathers  in 
its  manifold  suggestions.  The  result  was  a  fusion,  in 
which  Hebrew  unity  formed  the  chief  ingredient  yet 
was  never  able  quite  to  free  itself  from  the  clinging  rem- 
nants of  the  ancient  polytheism,  nor  even  from  the  attrac- 
tion of  the  dualistic  solution.  The  creeds  of  Christendom 
growing  out  of  this  mixture  reflect  their  origin  in  the 
clearest  manner.  The  principle  of  unity,  seeking  expres- 
sion, now  in  the  extreme  of  Sabelhanism  and  now  in 
the  opposite  extreme  of  Samosatianism,  was  driven 
from  both  these  positions  by  the  persistent  demand  for 
a  statement  of  the  divine  nature  which  should  still 
satisfy  the  latent  instinct  of  polytheism.  It  was  not 
possible  to  carry  the  mass  of  Christian  theologians  up  to 
the  point  of  accepting  a  divine  ideal  that  should  take 
away  all  mediation  and  so  bring  man  face  to  face  with 
his  God.  Arianism  tried  it  once  more  and  failed.  Every 
subtlety  of  the  Greek  intellect  was  invoked  to  show  that 


296  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

in  thus  demanding  a  multiplex  definition  of  God  no 
violation  of  the  principle  of  unity  was  intended ;  and  yet 
no  sooner  did  any  one  take  the  theologians  at  their  word 
and  proclaim  a  real  and  single  divine  unity  than  he  was 
declared  the  most  impious  of  heretics.  It  was  in  vain 
that  the  ritual  of  the  Church  emphasized  in  every  way 
the  true  humanity  of  Jesus ;  the  hold  of  the  divinity  in 
him  upon  the  imagination  of  a  polytheistic  world  was 
too  strong.  It  rooted  itself  in  the  affections  of  Christen- 
dom until  it  seemed  at  times  almost  to  endanger  the 
dignity  of  God  himself.  The  same  instinct  appears  also 
in  the  readiness  with  which  the  same  polytheistic  gener- 
ation found  room  for  all  that  half-world  of  demi-gods 
and  heroes  against  which  the  early  zeal  of  Christianity 
had  protested  so  loudly.  The  old  legend-building  activ- 
ity set  in  once  more  and  produced  that  delightful  multi- 
tude of  humanized  deities  and  deified  mortals  which, 
under  the  categories  of  angels  and  of  saints,  have 
charmed  the  childish  fancy  of  every  Christian  age. 

So  also  did  it  fare  with  the  dualistic  influences  sur- 
rounding the  birth  and  early  growth  of  Christianity. 
Unity  was  declared,  but  only  at  the  price  of  maintaining 
unchanged  and  unabashed  the  notion  of  an  eternal  con- 
flict. Within  the  innermost  circle  of  the  Christian 
apologists  we  find  a  continuous  and  persistent  effort  to 
give  to  Christian  doctrine  a  dualistic  color.     Whenever 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD  297 

this  effort  became  too  clearly  defined,  so  that  the  cry  of 
^'Manicheism  !"  could  be  raised,  then  it  was  squarely  met 
in  controversy  or  by  law  and  seemed  to  be  vanquished. 
Yet  its  traces  are  to  be  found  at  every  stage  of  formu- 
lation of  the  Christian  confessions.  It  went  all  lengths 
except  the  farthest  and  at  many  crises  of  the  later  as 
well  as  the  earlier  Church  it  has  almost  seemed  as  if  the 
figure  of  the  Prince  of  Evil  would  overshadow  that  of 
the  Lord  of  all  Good. 

Such  has  been  the  history  of  the  struggle  within  Chris- 
tianity to  maintain  one  of  its  cardinal  tenets.  The 
unity  of  God  has  been  constantly  threatened  and  has 
needed  to  be  as  constantly  defended.  It  is  here  that  the 
Unitarian  thought  of  God  becomes  clear.  It  begins, 
continues,  and  ends  with  this  simple,  fundamental,  and 
sufficient  proposition,  —  that  God  is  One  and  can  be 
understood  and  worshipped  as  One.  The  Unitarian  is 
not  without  sympathy  with  all  the  devices  for  making 
God  intelligible  that  we  have  here  been  considering.  He 
feels  the  charm  of  polytheism  and  the  logic  of  duaHsm. 
He  is  quite  ready  to  beHeve  that  there  have  been  times 
and  peoples  that  could  have  had  no  other  ways  of  bring- 
ing the  divine  ideal  within  reach  of  their  human  powers. 
What  most  impresses  him,  however,  is  that  in  those 
very  times  and  among  those  very  peoples  the  best  minds 


298  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

were  able  to  rise  above  the  popular  forms  to  the  essential 
unity  that  gave  them  Hfe.  Even  more  than  this :  he 
thinks  he  can  see,  even  in  the  feeling  of  the  popular 
heart,  the  same  true  instinct  pointing  to  unity  as  the 
explanation  of  diversity.  What  Unitarians  dread  for 
themselves  and  for  others  is  that  insistence  on  multi- 
pHcity  should  divert  their  thought  and  their  allegiance 
from  the  one  central  idea  of  unity  which  is  to  them  the 
source  of  the  harmony  of  all  things.  As  Christians  they 
believe  that  it  was  the  mission  of  Jesus  to  declare  precisely 
this  unity  and  to  make  it  clear  to  men  as  the  one  sufficient 
explanation  of  the  law  that  binds  them  to  each  other  and 
to  the  universe.  They  follow,  with  as  much  patience  as 
may  be,  the  familiar  arguments  to  show  that  the  divine 
nature  cannot  be  comprehended  under  any  other  form 
than  that  which  the  Church  has  sanctioned  in  its  creeds, 
and  they  remain  unconvinced.  These  forms  seem  to 
them  the  clever  inventions  of  theologians,  founded  in 
some  very  obvious  and  very  powerful  human  instincts, 
but  not  touching  the  root  of  the  matter.  Back  of  all 
these  forms  they  find  ever  the  plain,  simple,  and  suffi- 
cient fact  of  final  and  necessary  unity.  Least  of  all  can 
Unitarians  have  any  part  or  lot  in  the  process  by  which 
the  nobihty  of  the  human  Jesus  is  confused  with  the 
abstract  and  theologic  Christ.  As  in  the  chapter  about 
Human  Nature  we  were  led  into  a  discussion  of  the 


THE  THOUGHT  OF  GOD  299 

divine,  so  here,  if  we  were  to  begin  the  consideration  of  the 
divine  in  Jesus,  we  should  be  forced  to  repeat  what  we 
have  aheady  said  about  his  essential  humanity.  Enough 
here  to  say  that  the  Unitarian  emphasis  on  the  manhood 
of  Jesus  only  throws  into  stronger  relief  the  unclouded 
purity  of  the  divine  idea  of  unity. 

Unity  is  the  first  fact  of  the  divine  nature  as  to  which 
the  Unitarian  is  sure  beyond  the  possibility  of  doubt. 
The  second  is  that  the  God  he  v/orships  is  not  himself. 
He  can  conceive  of  God  only  as  being  outside  the  thinking 
mind  of  man,  the  ^'something  not  ourselves"  that  sums 
up  to  us  all  our  highest  ideas  of  what  is  needed  to  hold 
the  universe  in  order  and  to  make  clear  to  us  our  true 
place  in  that  ordered  universe.  In  other  words,  the  God 
of  the  Unitarian  is  a  transcendent  God,  a  reality,  and  not 
a  fiction  of  the  human  mind.  But  the  moment  he  has 
made  this  clear  to  himself,  there  comes  another  thought 
equally  clear  and  equally  insistent,  namely,  that  this  same 
God,  outside  ourselves  and  outside  the  universe,  is  at 
the  same  time  within  us  and  within  the  universe.  This 
double  aspect  of  deity  is  possible  only  through  the  earlier 
conviction  that  God  is  spirit.  If  we  allow  ourselves  ever 
so  slight  a  wavering  on  this  point;  if  we  indulge  for  a 
moment  in  the  tempting  illusion  that  God  is  to  be  de- 
scribed in  material  terms,  as  form,  substance,  essence,  or 


300  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

by  whatever  other  still  less  substantial  image  we  will, 
then  we  must  place  him  somewhere,  either  wholly  out- 
side ourselves  or  wholly  within  ourselves.  Either  of 
these  alternatives  excludes  the  other.  If,  however,  we 
can  rise  to  this  first  primary  definition  of  Jesus,  that 
God  is  spirit,  then  we  can  satisfy  both  our  needs  at  once ; 
we  can  think  of  God  as  transcendent  and  at  the  same 
time  as  immanent.  All  the  imagery  of  all  the  prophets 
is  not  too  grand  to  picture  his  supreme  and  unrivalled 
excellence,  but  we  feel  no  less  poignantly  the  still,  small 
voice  that  reveals  him  to  our  inmost  heart. 

This  is  the  firm  ground  on  which  the  Unitarian  rests 
all  his  further  thought  of  God,  the  basis  of  unity  and  of 
transcendent  immanence.  Beyond  this  he  must  frankly 
confess  that  thought  is  so  dependent  upon  language  and 
language  is  so  completely  a  thing  of  human  habit,  that 
it  is  impossible  to  get  beyond  the  limitations  of  human 
ideas.  The  only  thing  we  can  do  is  to  free  ourselves  as 
far  as  we  can  from  every  temptation  to  imagine  that  the 
human  forms  in  which  we  must  clothe  our  thought  are 
really  adequate  expressions  of  the  divine.  Unitarians 
can  accept  fully  the  traditional  summary  of  the  divine 
nature  under  the  terms  of  power,  wisdom,  and  love. 
They  do  this  because  they  have  no  command  of  language 
that  can  carry  them  beyond  these  categories.  They 
follow  with  entire  understanding  the  course  of  reasoning 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD  301 

by  which  theologians  of  many  generations  have  shown 
the  completeness  of  this  threefold  view  of  the  divine 
nature.  It  is  enough  for  them  also.  They  worship  the 
spirit  of  power  informed  by  wisdom  and  restrained  by 
love ;  the  spirit  of  wisdom  moved  by  power  and  guided 
by  love ;  the  spirit  of  love  made  active  by  power  and  en- 
lightened by  wisdom.  It  is  a  helpful  and  a  convenient 
summarizing  of  their  thought,  but  they  are  aware  that 
it  is  not  a  definition. 

Above  all,  Unitarians  Hke  to  think  of  God  under  the 
endearing  name  of  Father.  It  expresses  to  them  more 
fully  than  any  other  word  could  do  that  freedom  of 
access  which  is  to  them  the  most  precious  thing  in  their 
relation  to  God.  It  makes  concrete  to  them  all  that  we 
have  been  saying  about  unity.  As  human  fatherhood 
admits  of  no  division  in  love  or  responsibility,  so  the 
figure  of  the  divine  fatherhood  removes  God  at  once 
from  any  possible  rivalry.  It  sums  up  all  that  we  have 
said  about  worship,  for,  as  we  have  no  earthly  relation 
so  free  and  direct  as  that  of  parent  and  child,  so  no 
figure  of  words  could  express  more  fully  all  that  the 
Unitarian  feels  about  his  right  to  address  himself  freely 
and  directly  to  the  Power  making  for  righteousness,  that 
is  also  infinitely  wise  and  infinitely  good.  It  represents 
his  protest  against  the  claims  of  all  priesthoods  and 
sacraments,    orders   and   institutions,    to    come    in    as 


302 


UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 


licensed  agents  of  a  being  to  whom  he  is  nearer  than 
to  all  these. 

These  are  some  of  the  ways  in  which  Unitarians  seek 
to  make  the  idea  of  God  clearer  and  more  present  to 
their  thought  and  their  feeling.  None  of  them  is  an 
original  way.  All  these  figures  have  been  used  over 
again  in  the  long  record  of  the  Christian  Apology. 
What  distinguishes  Unitarian  thought  on  this  subject 
from  that  of  the  traditional  theology  is  the  consistency 
with  which  it  clings  to  this  particular  circle  of  ideas  and 
refuses  to  confuse  them  with  others  that  do  not  seem 
to  belong  with  them.  Its  criticism  of  the  prevaiHng 
creeds  is  that  they  have  allowed  the  emphasis  to  be 
transferred  from  the  essential  to  the  secondary  aspects 
of  Christian  speculation.  It  dwells  upon  the  idea  of 
unity  because  the  Christian  tradition  seems  to  have 
sacrificed  that  essential  of  a  really  comprehensible  uni- 
verse to  a  desire  to  crystallize  certain  aspects  of  deity 
into  actual  personahties. 

In  like  manner  Unitarians  are  accustomed  to  use  the 
word  ''Creator."  In  so  doing  they  do  not  commit 
themselves  to  any  theory,  theological  or  scientific,  as  to 
the  origin  of  the  visible  universe  or  of  man  as  a  part  of  it. 
Certainly,  all  their  habits  of  thought  point  them  away 
from  the  notion  of  a  sudden  creation  as  expressed  in  the 
sacred  books  of  the  Hebrews  and  of  many  other  peoples. 


THE  THOUGHT    OF    GOD  303 

That  seems  to  them  only  a  childish  fable  born  of  the 
instinct  for  the  concrete  and  the  dramatic  that  is  one 
of  the  most  obvious  marks  of  childhood,  whether  it  be 
the  childhood  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race.  These 
same  habits  of  thought  make  them  instinctively  sym- 
pathize with  that  other  notion  of  the  origin  of  things, 
to  which  we  give  the  name  of  '^evolution.''  Such  an 
idea  seems  to  them  consistent  with  the  sense  of  law 
that  governs  them  in  so  many  other  conclusions.  Yet 
there  would  probably  be  found  among  Unitarians  as  many 
shades  of  opinion  about  the  details  of  evolution  as  among 
thinking  men  in  general.  Their  thought  of  God  as 
Creator  does  not  depend  upon  any  fixed  view  of  the 
process  by  which  creation  was  performed.  It  may,  so 
far  as  this  is  concerned,  have  been  a  short  process  or  a 
long  one.  All  the  Unitarian  means  is  that,  as  he  tries 
to  give  account  to  himself  of  what  God  means  to  him,  he 
finds  it  impossible  not  to  think  of  him  as  the  final 
Source  from  which  all  being  flows.  He  cares  little 
under  what  form  this  idea  is  presented.  He  reads  the 
history  of  the  long  struggle  in  the  earliest  centuries  of 
Christianity  to  produce  an  idea  of  God  that  should  be 
free  of  this  element  of  creatorship;  how  so  many  of  the 
keenest  minds  were  unable  to  admit  it  into  their  defi- 
nition at  all  and  declared  that  only  by  a  degradation 
of  the  divine  ideal  could  God  be  conceived  of  as  coming 


304 


UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 


into  direct  contact  with  matter  in  the  process  of  creation. 
He  follows  these  men  in  their  further  argument :  that  the 
actual  creative  work  must  have  been  done  by  another 
and  lesser  being,  acting  as  the  obedient,  though  uncon- 
scious, servant  of  the  true  and  absolute  God.  And  then 
he  listens  to  the  triumphant  reply  of  Tertullian :  that 
even  though  this  were  the  case,  this  lesser  deity,  pre- 
cisely because  he  was  the  creative  spirit,  would  be  the 
deity  whom  men  must  love  and  worship,  and  he  finds 
his  S3niipathy  going  out  to  this  warmly  human  con- 
viction rather  than  to  the  faultless  logic  of  the  ^'men 
who  knew."  It  is  not  so  much  that  God  is  the  Creator 
as  that  the  Creator  is  God.  Humanity  is  so  made  that 
it  will  worship  the  being  who  gave  it  the  gift  of  life  and 
made  the  universe  in  which  it  has  its  part.  The  sense 
of  dependence  is  an  element  of  the  rehgious  instinct, 
and  it  is  precisely  this  sense  of  dependence  that  is  ex- 
pressed in  the  word  ''Creator." 

See  how  close  the  connection  of  ideas  here  is.  The 
same  thinkers  who  were  trying  to  teach  the  doctrine  of 
a  non-creating  God  were  the  very  ones  who  were  most 
deeply  impressed  with  the  idea  of  the  reaHty  of  evil 
and  of  its  expression  in  the  world  of  matter.  Matter  to 
them  lay  over  against  spirit,  so  completely  severed  from  it 
that  it  could  be  explained  only  on  the  supposition  of  a 
different  creator.     Man,  being  hopelessly  involved  in  a 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD  305 

material  form,  must  also  be  the  work  of  this  lesser  and 
imperfect  being.  How  foreign  all  this  world  of  thought  is 
to  the  sphere  of  ideas  in  which  the  Unitarian  moves  ! 
To  him  there  is  no  such  opposition  of  spirit  and  matter. 
For  him  "  the  whole  round  earth  is  every  way  bound 
by  gold  chains  about  the  feet  of  God."  The  law  of 
harmony  he  accepts  includes  within  its  working  the 
mind  of  man  and  the  order  of  the  universe  in  which 
he  lives.  There  is  no  room  in  his  scheme  of  things 
for  any  antagonism  that  could  draw  a  line  between 
God  and  his  work.  He  can  think  of  all  creation  as  one 
thing  in  many  parts  and  these  parts  all  necessary  to 
its  complete  and  orderly  working.  He  therefore  confesses 
himself  gladly  in  the  following  of  those  who  in  that  far 
off,  critical  period  of  the  Church's  Hfe  saved  it,  once 
for  all,  from  the  deadly  error  of  a  philosophic  dualism 
that  would  have  left  mankind  floating  in  the  dreary 
waste  of  an  orphaned  universe. 

Finally,  the  Unitarian  adds  to  all  these  other  aspects 
of  Deity  the  notion  of  an  unchanging  Law.  The  quali- 
ties we  have  just  been  considering  carry  with  them  each 
the  implication  of  a  Will.  Power,  wisdom,  love,  the 
creative  activity,  —  these  all  suggest  the  necessity  of  a 
will  to  direct  their  action.  Power  without  the  will  to 
exercise  it,  wisdom  without  the  will  to  direct  it,  love 
without  the  will  to  apply  it,  creative  activity  without 


3o6  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

the  will  to  set  it  in  motion,  —  these  are  such  unthinkable 
ideas  that  men  have  gone  all  lengths  in  translating  the 
divine  activity  into  terms  of  human  will.  In  so  doing 
they  have,  generally  with  a  certain  consciousness,  re- 
jected the  idea  of  law  as  necessarily  limiting  the  free- 
dom of  action  of  the  divine.  A  God  of  law  has  seemed 
to  suggest  the  very  opposite  of  a  God  capable  of  willing 
to  do  or  not  to  do  what  pleased  him.  The  Unitarian 
escapes  this  difficulty  because  to  him  there  is  no  essen- 
tial antagonism  in  these  two  ideas  of  will  and  law. 
Within  the  limits  of  human  experience,  indeed,  such  an 
antagonism  is  obvious.  It  is  true  that  to  us,  in  the  affairs 
of  our  daily  lives,  law  implies  the  restraint  of  our  wills, 
and  freedom  of  the  will  suggests  escape  from  law.  The 
very  definition  of  will,  we  say,  is  the  freedom  to  do  or 
not  to  do  what  at  the  moment  seems  good  to  us,  without 
restraint  from  any  outward  compulsion. 

And  yet,  even  within  these  narrow  limits  of  our  own 
human  observation,  we  discern  the  possibility  of  a 
partial  reconciliation  between  these  opposites.  As  we 
have  already  noted,  the  highest  human  understanding  of 
freedom  of  the  will  is  freedom  to  adjust  it  to  what  we 
conceive  to  be  the  divine  will.  And  how  could  we  make 
this  adjustment  if  the  divine  will  itself  were  to  be  thought 
of  as  something  fitful,  whimsical,  transient,  affected  by 
the  passions  which  disturb  our    own.     It  is   precisely 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD  307 

because  of  this  disturbance  of  our  own  passions  that  we 
seek  outside  ourselves  for  something  steady  and  perma- 
nent to  counteract  them.  The  name  for  the  steady 
and  the  permanent  is  Law.  We  do  our  best  within  our 
human  limits  to  define  the  law,  but  we  are  always  con- 
scious that  we  have  not  reached  a  satisfactory  definition. 
Beyond  all  human  striving  there  is,  we  feel,  another  and 
a  higher  law  combining  all  those  perfections  we  vainly 
seek  to  embody  in  our  earthly  systems.  That  highest 
law  the  Unitarian  does  not  fear  to  call  the  Will  of  God. 
He  is  not  afraid  of  the  charge  that  he  is  limiting  God  by 
this  thought  of  his  will  as  law.  If  he  should  for  a  moment 
pretend  to  understand  that  law,  then  indeed  he  would 
expose  himself  to  this  charge.  For  no  law  that  he  could 
understand  would  be  worthy  of  comparison  with  the 
divine  will.  It  is  because  he  thinks  of  the  divine  law 
as  beyond  human  knowledge  that  he  can  think  of  it  also 
as  the  perfect  expression  of  the  divine  will.  In  the  effort 
to  make  his  will  correspond  to  the  divine  law  as  far  as 
he  can  see  into  it,  he  feels  himself  to  be  adjusting  his 
will  to  the  will  of  God. 

Or,  to  put  it  in  this  way :  the  highest  idea  of  earthly 
law  would  be  such  a  law  as  should  express  the  highest 
impulses  of  the  human  will.  If  our  law  could  provide  for 
the  best  development  of  individual  power  and  individual 
character,  while  at  the  same  time  securing  the  widest 


3o8  UNITARIAN  THOUGHT 

exercise  of  all  the  social  virtues,  love,  charity,  fairness, 
help,  self-sacrifice,  generosity,  and  by  whatever  other 
name  we  may  call  the  best  there  is  in  us,  then  we  should 
say :  we  have  a  perfect  law.  In  fact,  it  would  be  so 
perfect  that  it  would  not  appear  as  law  at  all.  It  would 
seem  to  be  only  the  natural  action  of  the  perfected  human 
wills  of  men  perfectly  adjusted  to  the  highest  human 
ideals.  We  should  most  perfectly  obey  the  law  when 
we  most  completely  followed  our  own  will.  Now  some- 
thing like  this  is  what  the  Unitarian  means  when  he 
calls  the  divine  law  the  perfect  expression  of  the  divine 
will.  His  thought  of  God  includes  a  will  which  is  so 
balanced  that  there  is  no  name  for  it  but  law  and  a  law 
so  perfect  in  its  beneficence  that  there  is  no  name  for 
it  but  will.  What  men  are  always  striving  for  and 
never  attaining,  that  is  precisely  the  imperfect  suggestion 
of  what  the  divine  must  be.  The  moment  we  pass  out  of 
the  region  of  our  own  limitations  into  the  atmosphere 
of  pure  faith,  all  seeming  contradiction  between  the  no- 
tions of  will  and  law  disappears,  and  we  see  that  these 
are  but  two  aspects  of  the  one  divine  ideal. 

The  thought  of  God  to  the  Unitarian  is  thus  the  sum 
of  his  highest  conceptions  of  the  Being  that  is  at  the 
centre  and  heart  of  all  things  seen  and  felt  under  the 
varied  aspects  of  unity,  power,  wisdom,  love,  and  law. 


THE  THOUGHT  OF   GOD 


309 


Though  he  comes  slowly  to  his  formulations,  thinking 
his  way  along  from  the  starting-point  of  his  own  human 
nature,  through  the  lesser  problems  of  the  Christian 
tradition,  which  are  also  the  problems  of  all  religion, 
and  only  in  the  light  of  these  more  tangible  results 
arrives  at  last  to  a  certain  clearness  as  to  the  divine,  still 
this  divine  ideal  is  none  the  less  the  central  and  informing 
spirit  of  what  we  may  now  venture  to  call  for  the  first 
time  the  Unitarian  Theology.  As  all  our  thought  has 
been  leading  us  up  to  this  final  summary  of  Christian 
speculation  on  the  highest  things,  so  we  might  now  reverse 
the  process  and  show  how  the  Unitarian's  thought  of 
Man  and  his  fate,  of  Scripture,  the  Church,  Worship,  the 
person  of  Jesus,  and  the  limits  of  the  Supernatural  are  all 
to  be  interpreted  in  the  light  of  his  conception  of  the 
divine  nature.  That  reverse  process,  however,  we  leave 
to  the  patient  reader,  who  shall  have  followed  our  thought 
thus  far.  If  he  can  pursue  it  with  ease  and  clearness, 
the  purpose  of  this  little  book  will  be  answered.  If  not, 
that  will  be  the  sufficient  proof  that  it  has  failed  of  its 
desired  object. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


BY  THE  LATE 
CHARLES  CARROLL  EVERETT 

Bussey  Professor  of  Theology  and  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Divinity y 
Harvard  University 

Theism  and  the  Christian  Faith 

Edited  by  Edward  Hale,  from  students'  notes 
Cloth,  xviii  +  492  pages,  $2.50         postpaid  $2.75 

This  volume  gives  the  substance  of  Dr.  Everett's  main  course  on 
Theology,  including  theism  and  the  doctrines  of  Christianity.  His  line 
of  thought  develops  the  implications  of  the  three  ideas  of  the  rea=on,  — 
truth,  goodness,  and  beauty,  —  and  so  proceeds  to  the  study  of  the  prob- 
lems of  theology  and  of  the  position  of  Christianity  among  religions. 

The  recovery  of  the  lectures  by  Mr.  Hale's  skilful  use  of  several  sets 
of  students'  notes  (in  part  ste  ographic)  has  been  performed  with  more 
than  ordinary  success,  and  Dr.  Everett's  students  will  recognize  the 
living  form  and  manner  of  his  discourse. 

The  volume  is  published  as  Supplementary  Volume  No.  i,  of  the  Har- 
vard Theological  Review,  and  it  is  for  that  reason  possible  to  offer  it  at 
the  price  of  $2.50. 

"A  book  which  ...  no  thoughtful  minister  can  well  afford  to  leave  out  of  his 
library,  unless  he  can  borrow  it.  .  .  .  The  calm,  impartial  discussion  of  great 
themes  in  these  pages."  —  The  Auburn  Seminary  Record. 

"  This  book  again  brings  to  one's  notice  Professor  Everett's  almost  un- 
rivalled faculty  of  illustration.  .  .  .  Perhaps  no  book  dealing  with  the  themes 
of  which  this  book  treats  was  ever  before  published  so  abounding  in  a  wealth 
of  aptly  chosen  illustrations.  ...  To  the  preacher  who  is  dealing  with  life  at 
first  hand,  and  who  wants  ideas  that  are  immediately  applicable  to  the  needs 
of  human  souls  surrounding  him,  this  book  is  of  the  highest  value.  .  .  .  Few 
books  on  homiletics  are  half  as  useful  to  the  man  who  has  a  weekly  sermon  to 
produce,  for  here  are  practically  all  the  themes  on  which  the  preacher  needs  to 
sneak  set  forth  in  outlines  with  convincing  power."  —  TAe  Christian  Register. 


PUBLISHED    BY 

THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


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